This was a crazy month for me to say “no excuses, write!” but I’m doing it, albeit at far lower volume than I usually write, and have only missed one day so far, and today’s words were good ones.
I can barely keep my eyes open, fighting off sleep to achieve a no excuse month. Feels good to meet the goal and establish this discipline, even if it is so far away from where I intend to be. Soon. Little by little, step by step, drop by drop, a pattern, a habit, a commitment. Thank you Craig, and all of you for inspiring me to be and do better, and more than I imagined I could in a day, a week and a month, and year full of challenges!
Just getting words down. They kind of suck, but they’ve been written.
Comparing Rama’s tasks to those assigned by Khempos and reknown Vajrayana teachers; he modernized quite a bit by giving it modern American context and application, in exciting mileus, organizing data.
Still refining through line and clarifying my audience and my intentions and goals in writing this difficult book. Comparing Rama’s tasks and lectures to teachings on Bodhicitta and classical Tibetan texts, and their implementation in real life scenarios and tasks of difficult. New analysis happening. This is ongoing for two days. Essential reorientation occurring.
Thinned out yesterday’s words by more than -1720, still a lot of thinning to go to make the plot through-line more visible for continuation. I wrote a some new words to relpace the cuts, I guess.
Finally got some time to put in a nice chunk of writing. Getting some clarity around how to make this time and this version different — how to write what is most essential, and for whom.
Started at a quarter to midnight just to get some words in on an otherwise full day. Revised first chapter and capped it off.
Redid yesterday’s opening, searching for rising tension with less explanation.
I got an inspiring newsletter from VE Schwab today, and decided to start my story with a dead body. Since that’s the end, why not. Where it went from there got really interesting. Themes of suicide, existential angst, asburdity, occultism, and other tasty subjects woven into a lecture on Kurt Cobain’s suicide, given by the dead man 4 years prior. I didn’t mean to write a whodunnit, but maybe it’s also in there, in this memoir for America in 2025.
I left it to the last thing when it should have been the first. I hope tomorrow to prioritize better.
Didn’t think I was going to manage anything but made mysef. Just to stay on a roll.
I decided to plunge into a complete and unoutlined rewrite of a story I’ve been working on since 1998. I first tried to finish it during NanoWriMo of 2007, which ended in a catastrophic disaster that would be unbelievable as fiction. I have stripped away all that baggage and begun again, for relevance to the world today, as a candle in the wind.
