It's interesting. Tonight my partner was working, so I had the whole house to myself. Which is not a common event, given our disparate work schedules. But I did. And I decided, since I have a twelve mile walk tomorrow morning (the marathon is just fifteen days away! - yikes - ) that I needed some carbo loading tonight. It's okay - I can do this once in a while. I will not be pushing myself as hard as I will be for the half marathon in Seattle - but it is still walking twelve miles.
So I found a new to me place to go and I did. With my college ruled spiral bound notebook in hand and a pen. While I waited in line, I continued with the chapter I started last night. My whole day had been full of work, so I had not written anything today. But, standing at the little bar, I started writing. The maitre'd' guy (I think that wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans allows me to call him this and not even bother to look up how to spell it correctly) told me politely that there was a table for me by the front window.
"Perfect," I said and put down a couple more words to complete the thought as I walked over there, with one eye on the aisle so I didn't run into anyone.
I sat down and quickly decided what I wanted to eat. For any of my friends who read this, they will scoff because I tend to not be a fast decision maker when it comes to ordering food. But, believe it or not, I decided what I wanted in about three minutes. And got right back to writing down my story. The waitress came, I ordered, my Merlot arrived and my beets, walnut, and goronzola on mixed greens salad.
I tried to eat left handed since I knew that writing left handed would be abysmal and I would only get five or six words down. Gave up. Ate right handed, put the last bite of greens and chunk of beets into my mouth and was back at writing. I can drink left handed and write at the same time. Which I did.
Then came the penne with lemon butter sauce, green onions, salmon, and halibut - oh, and artichoke hearts. Dang, I had to put down the pen to eat. But it was worth it and I have an entire second meal waiting for me in my refrigerator downstairs right now.
So back to the writing. Then came the check. And I kept writing. There was only a short line in the restaurant now and I couldn't stop. The story was flowing - although in a different direction that I thought it would but my hand was literally moving faster than I could think and I could not stop it.
Well, I had to stop it after a few minutes. To get home. Then get sidetracked by an email and then a phone call. And it was all good. Because when I did finally get back to my story, I discovered - again - that my by hand word count and the story it contained were not bad at all. And I liked it.
So, second week, hah! Who cares! I did it. And I faced interruptions (oh, life). And still I ended today with a new word count of, ta da ....
28,035
...that is 2,092 words by hand in the space of about 80 minutes, which included ordering and eating!
