5ive

This time of night is not the optimistic time of night. This time of night I just know it ain't happenin'. I have a vague idea but no real outline and though some characters have popped out occasionally to drive dialog, I haven't a clue what will actually happen. My idea is a Big Idea, spanning centuries and lightyears, all crumpled down into a part of Earth in the present day, so there's a shitload of potential. But I keep thinking about ...

- Four hundred dollars available to feed three cars and seven people for the next ten days (we have long commutes so no, it's not enough).
- The ancient Schwinn adult tricycle I just have to buy tomorrow for $40 anyway (these come along every year or two at best).
- The suppressive effects on me of the relentless mess my parts of the house are in and how much more difficult that makes life (for ex when needing to wrench on a car while all my tools are hidden behind piles of crap).
- The destructive but fascinating character study that is a certain ex (not mine).
- The ripple effects of making errors that are visible in a work environment that is unforgivingly competitive.
- The fact that no one knows if the coming reorganization will justify the employee requisitions that have been opened or actually drive a reduction in headcount (you can bet the latter is more likely).
- Sleep. Ahh.

So three, four hundred words. Here's something I brilliantly wrote elsewhere:

I think a lot of us discover when doing NaNoWriMo that it takes a certain temperament to write a lot badly, and we don't all have it. If I try to charge through and make word count I end up lost in an unenjoyable incoherence, like the muddy weeds one ends up in for driving way too fast down a country road. Pretty soon I'm changing direction every paragraph, like yanking the wheel and stomping the gas pedal and not getting any closer to the road. The only thing to do is get out for a walk and after a few hours of giving my brain something else to do such as squeeze all it can out of an overused analogy, manifest that car back on the road again. But I don't have time for multiple, even if shorter, writing sessions.