Yesterday I’d hit a wall in my writing, as I tried to push my NaNoWriMo novel forward. But it was awful. Sometimes I think bringing forth a novel is a lot like childbirth. Painful, a total body experience, a lot of work, and quite as much a spiritual effort as a physical and mental one. Labor. And sometimes there’s a mixture of gasping and prayer involved.
And yesterday was no exception. Finally, I resorted to breaking out my post-Halloween-stash of BooBerry cereal. When I was in Walmart one day, I noticed the price on the family size boxes of all the monster cereals had temporarily gone down from $3.48 a box to just $1.00. Guess who bought TEN boxes. Okay, maybe it was eleven. And they’re mostly gone now. Including the box I opened yesterday.
I am not proud.
And my tongue might be permanently blue.
But then I asked the “People of Facebook” for a bit of feedback, this time about paintings and what art they knew of that was instantly recognizable. Their responses, which related directly to some of the blocks I was facing in my book, went straight to the heart of my problem and broke the wall in pieces. My fears and worries about the direction I’d chosen dissipated and this morning I was off to the races again. Another few thousand words onto the page (after deleting about that many or more).
A hallelujah moment–one to be celebrated with the remainder of the box of BooBerry.
Thanks, friends. It’s nice to know that people have my back.
Now…a few more words on the page before my kids get home from school.
So I stayed up until 2:30 this morning–and it wasn’t to clean my house or wrap Christmas presents! Nooooo. I had to finish Big in Japan. Thank you for such a great read, Jennifer! After years of reading, I can predict much of a novel’s plot. So Big in Japan didn’t hold many surprises for me. But before reading the book, I had no idea about the life of a sumo wrestler–much less an American one! I am so impressed with your thorough knowledge of the sport and culture of Japan. Keep up the good work. Now that I’m done with the book, maybe I’ll clean my house again–or at least get some sleep. 🙂
Oh, Kerry, I just saw this. Thank you so much! I’m so excited that you liked it so well. And don’t worry about cleaning. It’ll happen. Sometime. When all the good books are done being read. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Love ya!