Not Feeling the Love Today (26, 232 words)

I wish I could write like Alexandra Sokoloff!!!! I'm serious as a heart attack. This published horror author has the most beautiful writing style I've come across in absolutely ages. I almost have a girl-crush on her writing (my first ever mind you), and now I'll be going to the library to check out her books, starting with the first one so I can see how her style has grown or if she just started out with a beautiful novel right out of the gate. You have to check her out at http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/. She has a ton of followers, including me!

While I blog mainly for my own personal need for expression, I would love to have a blog following and I know if I could write half as well as she, my friends and even strangers would be signing on as Followers in droves. Who knows, maybe even my daughter and nieces would finally sign on as followers. I'll have to make time to figure out what I'm going through when November has sped into December; I'll have time then to figure out why I want others to acknowledge and yes - I'm going to say it - even praise from time to time the effort I'm putting into both my passion for writing and my blog. I think I'm having a pity party for one today. I think I've allowed myself to really experience the loneliness I've been ignoring for so long. When I wrote a tender love scene last night, I cried because I don't have that in my life.

I was feeling so wonderful about my word count this morning - I'm up to 26, 232 words and that count was definitely hard earned. I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday with Debe to meet some other Raleigh writers. Only one showed up: a nice gentleman by the name of Bill. I tried, I really tried hard, to concentrate - to get something accomplished - but I was hungry (always a good excuse to stall on starting the writing process), it was too noisy what with the tutor drilling the child at the table across from mine, and the crying newborns being bounced and shushed and ineffectively comforted by clueless new moms pushing even newer strollers in their pretty new mom outfits: even for me, a woman with a high tolerance for ignoring outside interference, there were just too many distractions. I got about 200 words done in 3 hours so I packed up the laptop Debe's husband had so kindly allowed me to use for the day (I don't have one) and took it back to her house. I'm sure I overstayed my welcome, looking back on our conversation she did drop several hints that she was trying to get caught up on her TV shows she had recorded, and she was yawning a lot. I don't know where my head was on that one. I felt disconnected and invisible when I left; I was lonely and lonesome and really needed the company of people. There was no one to talk to, no one to call, no one waiting for me. There was no one to ask me how it went, there was no one to rub away the crick in my neck from holding myself so tightly against the guilt of not producing a single word. No one to comfort me, to offer me solace. I didn't want to be by myself but I had no choice. I had to go home to my empty apartment to a cat that sometimes loves me, sometimes ignores me (kind of like my ex-husband). I decided to once again squelch those feelings that could easily, and often do, swallow me whole, and looking for a distraction from the lousy state of my non-existent life and the writing that I didn't get done, I realized that my kitchen needed cleaning. I got down on my hands and knees and vigorously scrubbed every square inch of that sucker with bleach and water. Then with Comet. Sebastian the cat just sat back and observed me; he was in the ignoring mode last night. I wiped down all the cabinets and even cleaned the kick plates underneath the cabinets. With every swipe across that ugly apartment linoleum, I could feel the cold stare of my computer, I could hear it calling me: you are behind, you are behind, you are behind and nobody cares but you.

I was at 22,040 words on Friday. I was on track on Friday. I was feeling good about my novel on Friday. Saturday, I simply checked out. I tried, but couldn't write a word. Nothing was making any sense to me. Catana, a NaNo buddy, said in her blog (http://wordsontop.blogspot.com/) that she felt as if she'd hit a wall but the wall wasn't solid -more like rubbery and bouncy as she tried to write a transitional phase of her book. That's the way I felt Saturday and most of Sunday. I kept going back to attempt to write and would have to push away because it just wasn't coming.

After I cleaned my kitchen, I decided I was hungry (Substitution? Avoidance? Not sure but either way, we won't go there). I leaned up against my kitchen sink and crunched and munched my way through a snack bag of baby carrots as I stared my computer down (there should have been cowboy get-ready-to-draw music in the background). I could feel it. Something was building. A tiny nugget, a hint of inspiration, a kernel of an idea how to continue. I didn't have a single word in mind but I knew what was needed would come this time. I whipped out my trusty memory stick and brought up my novel.

With the first keystrokes, my writer's brain - which, by the way, is 180 out from my everyday brain - took over and the words flowed like honey on a hot, July day. Yesterday's word count brought me up to 26, 232 words. I did 4,192 words last night in two and a half hours. Thank God for automatic spell check!

So why aren't I happy today? Because regardless of my efforts, I'm not sure anyone will even read this. To the two people who do read my blog faithfully (and my mother is one of them), thank you! Please pass my website (http://www.thezenofmurder.blogspot.com/) along to all your friends and ask them to sign on as Followers! I'm not feeling the love today and it's lonely here.

I wonder...if I could write 'purty' like Alexandra Sokoloff, would I, too, have a following? It's thoughts like this that make me doubt the point of what I'm doing, that make me question what I thought was a talent for writing.

Ah, hell. I'm just having a bad Monday. I'll keep typing and telling my story whether you are there or not. I know deep in my gut that I'll continue writing after National Novel Writing Month is over and I also have a certainty that eventually, I'll have a mainstream fiction best seller. I have a path I must walk to get there and the steps I must take are mine and mine alone. However, it would be so good to know I could share the results of my journey with you.

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“If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.” John Maxwell

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Day 6, Sis. Hang in there. Much love to you.