I have a friend, I'll call her 'Jennie,' who wrote a book in four months. I have another friend, I'll call her 'Christy,' who is right on her heels, closing in on the end of a book that she started in January. Both of these writers have ALREADY WRITTEN AN ENTIRE BOOK. And these are tight, high-quality reads, the gripping page-turning kind that are destined to be some kid's all time favorite made-me-love-reading YA books. Both of these writers bring scads of beautiful pages to share on writing group Wednesdays.
Hey, I’m writing a book, too! This week I brought one paragraph.
Usually, I am shockingly adept at turning any ordinary circumstance into something that is both bad and my fault, but this time, I just couldn't muster it. I loved writing that paragraph. It was about an empty hard-wood floored Community Center, and I just rambled around in that room, in that paragraph, for an hour, my mind peeking into every corner, exploring every shaft of light, taking my sweet time, with unwritten scenes of my book sometimes appearing right before my eyes.
I felt relaxed, which is different from the way I usually feel when I write, with the previously mentioned thin layer of sweat, and my nimble secretary fingers mocking my slow fiction brain. "Come on come on let's go,” my fingers yell, “something needs to happen here, yah, yah, you described that enough, let's goooooooo!" Well, you know what my brain said to my fingers that afternoon? "You know what Ms. Digits? Slow down. You are going to keep pace with me from now on, NOT the other way around. Now about this Community Center..."
