Expectations

My brain feels completely fried. I have been up and working for ten hours now, and the second-to-last thing I want to do is write. But writing beats homework, the last thing I want to do, and so I may actually end up writing something tonight. It probably won't be in coherent English though.

Ah well, you can't have everything.

I came up with the most brilliant scene the other day. I already talked about it with Blue, and she was enthusiastic about it too (I hope it was real enthusiasm! :) It's the kind of scene that pops into your head and you think YES. It has everything a scene needs: purpose, direction, action, excitement, clever dialogue (if I can do it right) and it's just plain cool. I am SO excited to write it. Too bad it's like halfway through the book!

And now for your feature presentation: expectations. I've been thinking about this, because in Spanish class we were talking about writing the other day and it came up that two (out of a huge class of - count them - three) of us write. My teacher, of course, then started asking me a bunch of questions about what I wrote, how I wrote it, etc. And I felt a little uncomfortable. So I tried to figure out why - and what I think is that it has to do with expectations. You tell people that you are writing a novel, and they have expectations. There is this weird sense that normal people do not write novels; that to write a novel you have to be a Writer (capital letter intended); and that soon there is going to be a finished product for them to see. They want to measure you by that.

What they don't realize is the beauty of writing and the fun part for me is the journey, the creation, the in-between parts. So even if I write a thousand words and then delete all one thousand of them, even though I have nothing material to show for my efforts, those efforts were valuable and useful to me.

Every so often you get someone who is understanding (and forgiving of first drafts). Those people are lucky finds, because they won't judge you or assume things about your work. Those are the people you want to have on your side, and I think I'm fortunate enough to know several people like that.

You guys are amazing.