Monday, September 03, 2007

10K for Labor Day Blues

This year, I was hyped for the Piker challenge of writing 10,000 words over Labor Day weekend. This year, as every year we've done it, I failed miserably.

I don't even know why I try. Labor Day Weekend is loaded with End-of-Summer stuff. There was the balloon launch from the local park on Saturday (yes, I could have used that for word count but I hate writing non-fiction), and a very open Sunday.

Pictures were the big thing for Saturday, and a long ride to exercise Dink, and after that, I was just about worthless until the evening, when I decided I would slam-dunk some word count in writing down family history. Wrong move.

Remembering family history means remembering who you heard it from. Well, since I heard it all from my mother, it meant that my attention was focused on her voice. But just writing exorcises my nightmares, so I spent Saturday night in peace.

Sunday was a night's sleep destroyed by nightmares, as having started the piece on family history changed "writing" to "obligation" and to further wreck my sleep, the moon was hideously bright. When I did sleep, I jerked myself awake, and when dawn came, I was too afraid of nightmares to relax again. I even bit the tip of my tongue as I once jerked awake from a nightmare.

Sorry, you can't write on that kind of preliminary. At least I can't .

There was nothing purgative about it. It was just hellish.


Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome isn't at all fun.

No comments: