Retreat Day Four: Less Work, More Talking, More Thinking

I didn't have a significant page count to show for my work yesterday.

But I did do a lot of thinking about the scenes and the characters.  I figured out how to reorder some scenes.

Sometimes that's the work.  My boyfriend asked me a few days ago how much I had gotten done and I basically bit his head off because that's not the right question to ask a writer.  It's not about page count per se.  It's about so much more than that.  And some days I have twenty pages done.  Some days I have one.  Some days I think about the work a lot and make significant strides.  And some days I don't. But the important thing is to keep writing, keep talking and keep thinking.

I had an amazing and expensive dinner with Molly last night.  We went to this wonderful restaurant and I flirted with a cute waiter.  It was a great way to end the first half of my trip, where she's been working with me.  Now she's off to Portland for the weekend to spend time with her family and I have her place all to myself.  And I'm moving on to the hard part of my trip, which is working on this pilot for four solid days.

I have to do a lot of thinking, but I also have to do a lot of writing.  I have to finish a draft of this pilot in these four days.  That includes me going up to SF to do a killer boot camp with good friends and to reconnect a bit.  I need that as well.  It's not just about writing in isolation, even though I need a lot of that too.  I want to punish my body a bit.  Fran Lebowitz says that writers do bad things to themselves to make up for the fact that they are playing God.  Well, I'm happy to do a good bad thing.  Destroying my body in this boot camp is my way to make up for playing God.  And I'm going to do that tomorrow.

But until then, I'm going to work, work, work my ass off.  The boot camp is both a punishment and a reward.

This morning I woke up and put some touches on some scenes and right now it looks like I'm at about 51 pages.  I have more tweaking to do, but this is a good start.  51 pages for three days of work.  I'm into it.  Next!

I am grateful for the words I have written and the words I am about to write.
I am grateful for the opportunity to be up here in such a beautiful and inspiring place.
I am grateful for friends' gracious hospitality.
I am grateful for the things in life that are both free and costly.
I am grateful for the time together with friends and that is worth having an experience.