A List At Midnight

1. There are advantages to letting a manuscript simmer for a long time. My current one is pushing 11 months. That is the longest it has ever taken me to write a novel. But this sort of magical thing happened last week where, I don't know if it's because my subconscious had been hard at work or what, the rest of the book came to me wholesale. All of the scenes, snippets of dialogue, the climax, the resolution. Everything. And so, since then, I've been writing like crazy, trying to get it all down before I lose it. I've mapped out a list of scenes (which I've never done!). And I've just been writing, writing, writing. The end is in sight. I can't believe I'm saying that, when two weeks ago, I hadn't even finished the first half.

2. In the last week, I have done nothing but eat, breathe, and live my novel. As a result, I've fallen quite in love with it, and I also don't think that's happened before. I'm scared that it will not be good enough. My last manuscripts, I'm not sure I was in love with them enough to be so protective.

3. This, nevertheless, does not mean it has gotten easy to write. It has only gotten easier. I rewrote a scene several times today to get it right. End of the day word count, around 800 words, and a solid 6 hours spent working on them.

4. As much as I'm loving this, I wish it wasn't happening right before law school finals. If I fail, it will be entirely because of my novel, but I'm powerless to put it on hold. I can't. Yet, I'm sacrificing precious study hours to write fiction instead.

5. In the past week, I've read six novels. I'll probably be up to seven by the end of the weekend. You can see how I'm not doing any real school work here.

6. Catching Fire was an amazing movie. I will definitely be seeing it again.

7. Gayle Forman makes me want to die with how good she is. Whether I love or hate her characters, when I read her writing and how phenomenal she is at love stories, I cry. I just cry. Also, her life. Her bio makes me feel like I'm wasting my existence by not traveling and changing the world on a daily basis.

8. Writing is a lonely endeavor, and I keep forgetting how hard it is to be isolated. As I'm sitting in my room, alone, eating a slice of leftover pecan pie and drinking a mug of tea, with bloodshot eyes and a look of total desperation at my computer screen, I keep thinking how nice it would be if I married another writer. Like Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier. Or, you know, I could be like Jess Rothberg, who wrote The Catastrophic History of You and Me, in her acknowledgments: "To Stephen Barbara, an agent so extraordinary he gave me no choice but to marry him."(/Libba Bray and Barry Goldblatt). Is it incredibly sad that I knew all of these people and things without even looking it up? I am too invested in the lives of authors.

9. I must remember that every day is an adventure and a gift. I need to remind myself more often.

10. Everyone underappreciates Peeta. That is all.