Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Seat Taken or I'll Whine If I Want To

I have a favorite desk in the library. It's on the second floor, in front of the new nonfiction titles, facing the window. But when I arrived today, it was already taken by a man with formidable posture and a pencil tucked behind his ear. I sighed and selected the next desk over. I think this would have been okay, except that I sat with my back to the window, and just as I was about to switch to the other side (they are facing desks, designed for two to sit), another man plunked down all his stuff and smiled. I half-heartedly returned his gesture and resigned myself to my fate. I then proceeded to slog through the most non-productive one hundred twenty writing minutes ever. I was unmoored, skittish. I felt like someone was reading over my shoulder and making gagging noises. I hit the delete key constantly.

But I stayed put.

And I waited. I waited for it, whatever "it" was, to pass. I kept thinking in five minutes, in five more minutes. And then, of course, five minutes would pass and nothing would change. This happened over and over and over again. At some point I should have cut my losses because these two hours—two truly uninterrupted hours in which I have no other available obligation—ugh. Forget it. As if I'm dealing with some rare and insurmountable hardship. As if 'hardship' is even a word I can legitimately use in describing my life. As if any of this is remotely interesting. As if this is anything other than me. Complaining again. When there's nothing to complain about.

*rolls eyes, heads off to bed*

4 comments:

Julie Wilson said...

I've been sick the last couple of days, yet I'm resigned to take advantage of this time off work. The first day I pushed out ten pages, ten pages I actually liked. I can't remember the last time I pushed out ten pages in one day. You can imagine how excited I was when I realized that I was still feeling like crap and wouldn't be able to make it in for the rest of the week. "I'll have thirty pages!" I thought. Yesterday, I propped myself in front of the computer again...not so much. It was productive in that I discovered something to tie two characters together in an important way -- sometimes it's only an idea that makes the day successful. But today, still icky, I'm determined a) to get something in my stomach, and b) to get myself up to twenty pages total heading into the weekend. By 5pm today, I want to be tucked away reading someone else's words, someone else's success story. (A whole other kind of research altogether.)

Rock on, V! You've got the determination to match the skill. You're all set!!!

End Scene.

ver said...

Ten pages?! The only way I could do that would be if I triple spaced and had 5-inch margins. Hahahahahahaha!

Still, I'm happy to report that things have gone a little more smoothly since this sad post.

Julie Wilson said...

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I was writing on toilet paper. ;)

ver said...

Oh yeah? Well, well, well...my ten pages are on 2 x 2 Post-Its...