Dispatch: First day

I arrived at the AirBnB where I’ll be staying until Monday, a little later than planned due to a stop at HomeGoods (but necessary!) and some traffic on the freeway. But I’m here! And the place is gorgeous. It’s a 1bed/1bath casita, separate from the main house. The owners showed me around and then freaked me out about five minutes later by knocking on the sliding glass door and handing me a vase of calla lilies. I was glad it wasn’t a plant that had to be watered, because I would have felt horrible killing their plant after they were so lovely to bring it to me.
 
Actually, if I have one complaint, it’s maybe that the place is a little too nice for what I’m trying to do, which is stick post-it notes to every surface and sit around in my comfy pants (the sweats that I bought a size too large and which should not be seen by outsiders). But I’m going to manage.
 
(Also I just noticed that one of the cutesy signs on the wall has a semi-colon in the wrong place. I really wished I hadn’t noticed that.)

The cheery little sign that greeted me. 

Oh yeah. I can do some work here (once I give myself permission to put my feet on the coffee table).

So, I moved my stuff inside, including a bag of food I brought to force myself to be inside as much as possible, but which already seems inadequate, especially since I realized I forgot to bring my yogurt. And then I realized I was starving so I opened up a bag of Sun Chips, and now I’m sitting at the very nice glass table setting my intentions for the evening and trying to fight off the gnawing feeling of dread.
 
Here it is:
 
My life was a little crazy at the beginning of the semester, but I was still managing to write at least two days a week and sometimes more, and then my life got crazier, and I had to shut down all creative impulses and switch into full survival mode. As it was, I slept so little over the last two weeks that my left eye is still doing its weird twitchy thing and I’m wondering if that might just be my new normal. This period of not writing, which has extended over the last month and a half, is the longest I’ve gone without writing in years.

In YEARS, no joke.
 
And every day that passed, I felt more and more like a fraud. I’m a writer but I’m not writing. I’m known amongst my friends and people in my writing circle for my work ethic. I call it butt-in-seat hours, making time. I don’t claim that I’m a better writer than anyone else, but I work hard, and maybe even a lot harder.
 
Except that I haven’t been doing it.
 
And now I’m trying to delve back into a manuscript that I worry has lost its momentum, mostly because that’s how I feel about myself right now. I’ve lost momentum. I’ve lost direction. I’ve been exercising one part of my brain to the point of exhaustion, and ignoring the other part, the place where I want to be. It’s scary to knock on that door again. I know that what I’m going to do this weekend isn’t going to be easy. It might not be pretty.

But I’m going to do it anyway.
 
***
 
I typed up some notes I made on one scene, and then there was some mental ugliness while I wrangled my way through two of three scenes that need to be written, but which I’m still figuring out as I go. Halfway through one, I realized it would be better another way, and so I highlighted text (I don’t delete at this stage) and rewrote, and moved forward.
 
My eye was twitching like crazy, but once I hit 3,000 words, I figured… I can do 4,000. And so I plowed through. 4,037 first draft words—much less finesse than final draft words, but now there’s something to work with.
 
And now I get to sleep.