Just Shy of 5 000 Words

This post won’t be 5 000 words long, or anywhere near that long.

I’ve been working on this piece that I keep writing about, here and here. I finished typing it out tonight. I edited most of it on paper and wrote up something of an outline before I started typing it out. I stuck true to the first draft as I was typing it out, ignoring all of the edits that I marked down.

For those of you that are interested, I used a pen that my sister bought me to make the edits. It’s a Diplomat Optimist, with a fine nib. And, I used Burgundy Mist by Private Reserve Ink for ink. It’s a beautiful combination.

Approximately nine and a half of my handwritten pages comes in at 4 952 words. The average novel is about 64 000 words long, so I’m sitting at just under 8%. I’m still about 195 000 words short of writing anything I’d ever submit to a publisher. On that math, I still have about 390 pages to go if this is going to turn into my first book.

I would love to bore you with what I’ve already written, but I was given very good advice from a creative writing teacher: never share anything you write with anybody until it’s published. Let’s just hope that it’s worth the wait.

Writing this piece is proving to be more involved than I expected it to be. I’m finding myself thinking about events from my past that I’ve tucked quite deeply into the folds of my brain. I’m doing more research than I thought would be necessary; I’ve put books on hold at the library. I’ve repeated myself in this piece, in various ways, more times than I’ve rewritten this sentence.

It’s been interesting, though. This is probably what all of the therapists I’ve seen over the years have been suggesting that I write. Well, not really.

What’s really been most interesting is coming face-to-face, in a sense, with what I really think. A close second is trying to figure out how to make sense of all of it. Following behind is trying to make this shit interesting; there is so little humour in what I’ve written so far.

Every time I read over what I’ve written, I find something that I’ve missed or failed to include. Each attempt to include an oversight feels like a necessary regression. Then, with the entire piece in view, it feels like repetition.

What’s worse is that I still haven’t a clue about the point that I’m trying to make by writing this piece.

So, here are some pictures of some art that I worked on this evening, before typing out the piece that I’m writing about:

This was my first attempt at  cutting and using a cardboard stencil.
This was my first attempt at cutting and using a cardboard stencil.
I want to start working with red dots. I've got an idea....
I want to start working with red dots. I’ve got an idea….

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