Not surprisingly, it’s another late start to writing. I thought about storyizing again (how about that for a new word?) but I’m going to resist tonight, at least until I can’t think of anything else to write except filler, which, at that point, I figure I might as well just write a story and call it pathetic.

My guests are leaving one by one. Randy left this morning. My mother leaves tomorrow morning. And Doolies leaves tomorrow night. Then it’s back to David and the Castle, alone again. I shouldn’t complain because I’m taking a vacation in two weeks to go to New York with Doolies. My head is hurting a bit now. It’s either from too much sleep today, thanks to late rising and a long nap this evening, or the lack of yummy caffeine. Although I craved it today, I didn’t find an opportunity to drink it without showing my true addicted state. My mother tried to convince me tonight that it was crazy not to have cable on my television. I explained to her that it was a conscious choice based on my inability to control my addictions. My brilliantly articulated arguments didn’t change her conclusion that I was crazy. I’m trying to avoid yummy caffeine from going the way of cable. That part of NEQID will have to wait for another time. I’m not ready yet again to give up yummy caffeine. The bucks of stars might go out of business without my patronage.

Do you see what happens when I don’t eat my yummy caffeine? I become distracted and the Goal seems far away. I’m still looking for a way of articulating the Goal. Some things shouldn’t be forced, and the naming of an important part of my life will come. NEQID did—I guess that’s my only example.

The Nameless One made a comment yesterday about how my prolific writing impressed him. He claimed not to be able to write this many words in a day, even after acknowledging that the quality of the words were, how did he put it, rather low. What he failed to admit, however, was that it was not that he couldn’t write this many words—he did in fact write more than this many words during a time the Marathon—it’s just he doesn’t have the time. What I’ve realized by doing this over the last many days is that the difference between writing the Goal and my normal consternations or story drafts is rather minimal. Both take me around an hour or two. The difference between the two is editing time. If you hadn’t noticed, the time I spend on editing has decreased dramatically. I’ll throw an edit here or there, especially where it becomes obvious that I’ve lost my thought, or as I reread parts to figure out where I want to take the story or musing next, but I don’t spend the twenty minutes to an hour I used to spend cleaning up the prose and removing the clichés, poor grammar, bad style, and uninteresting parts. It’s all about the word count, baby. I live and dream by the numbers slowly ticking upward.

What I’ve stopped doing since restarting this process is worrying about what I’m writing or what people will think of my writing. (Not that I worried too much about that before hand.) Another thing that I’ve been working on is not worrying about repeating myself, or saying the same thing twice, or just going on and on by presenting the same idea. I’m all over that. I’ve realized many authors use repetition in their arsenal. One of my goals in life has always been not to bore people. I don’t know where I acquired this need, but I’m always studying people’s reactions, looking for the faintest sign of boredom. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t do well speaking in large groups (not in front of large groups, but in large groups—I’m not explaining this well: imagine six people standing in a circle talking about something). I spend so much time weighing whether what I have to say is important and interesting enough to say, that I end up not saying anything. It’s also why I didn’t speak much in my classes. Unless I had something very insightful to contribute (at which point, my heart would begin racing until I either said it, or decided not to share it with the class), I kept my mouth shut. Even when a professor would call on me, I would give the shortest possible reply, safe in the knowledge that the professor was looking for a key word, and once he received the word, he would take off and extrapolate the real answer from the word. Professors are so easy to manipulate.

Getting back to my writing (as if I talk about much else here), in the last couple of stories I’ve written (okay, I’ve only written two stories, and neither of them have been complete—I don’t know if I’ll continue either of them, by the way. I’m lazy that way, but I’m sure you already know that), I’ve tried to repeat characteristics and thoughts a few times at different parts of the story. It wasn’t a conscious repeating. Instead, I wrote what I was thinking, and kept writing. I, like most people, tend to repeat thoughts many times. I would usually filter those out when I wrote, thinking that since I had said the same thing previously, I shouldn’t say it again. For the first drafts, however, I’ve been trying to find all of these filters and shut them down. I’ll have plenty of time to go back and remove the ineffectual repetitions later. (Heh. That’s assuming I ever get back to editing. I’m not sure how I’m going to fit editing in with writing 2,000 words. That’s one of the major problems with my evil plan (2kep? EP?), when will I polish my mental diarrhea (nope, didn’t spell it right this time either)? I haven’t an answer for that yet. I’m hoping it’ll hit me along with the acronym for the evil plan or writing 2k or the Goal.

I’m halfway through today’s entry, and I’m not sure where the rest of the thoughts will come from. I guess Chuck was right when he said it would probably be easier to write all these words as a story instead of all these words as senseless musings. I felt today was not a story day, particularly since it was yummy caffeine free. I’ll get back into storyizing tomorrow and see where it takes me. But for now, I have to find where 900 more words will come in.

A good place to waste words is with weather. I understand somewhat people’s fascination with weather. I tried to stay away from this topic when I was younger. I thought that it was an inane topic and, like most of my hated small talk, the world would be better without it. Some things you cannot avoid, however. And one of those things is weather. Friday and Saturday were terribly hot. According to the news reports that other people told me about, both days set records as the thermometer punctured the 80s and reached toward the 90s (I see why it is so hard for weather people to think up original verbs for the changes in temperature and weather). Today was cloudy and cool, a nice break from the heat wave, and we spent much of it outside, visiting with a college-aged cousin in one of the outdoor malls, and walking around my neighborhood. Rain is back in the forecast, so this brief look into the summer is supposed to end early this week.

What did I tell you about weather? It was worth a few hundred words and pushed me closer to 1,500. I spoke about my count at the end of Nano. At 1,500 I’m for all purposes done. Anyone with a monkey can write 500 words. It’s getting close to that point that’s difficult. I lost my train of thought. I was talking about word count, and Doolies, who is finishing up after her shower, called over to check my word count. As I said yesterday, it’s nice to have Doolies visiting. I feel less anxious and less bored when she’s around. She’s a great calming influence on me. She helps me be nice to my family (something I still have a problem with—especially with Randy. I don’t know what it is with the younger sister relationship, but I keep feeling the need to make fun of her or tell her she’s wrong. It must be left over from our childhood, when Eileen and I would mercilessly pick on her). I’d rather not drop her off at the airport tomorrow. I might kidnap her and keep her here, holding her ransom from her residency program. I could probably get at least a basket of fruit for her. Just a thought.

I’m at exactly 1,500 words now, and I’m again stuck. I know I said that even a drunk monkey could write 500 words, but I’m not feeling very drunk. If it weren’t for the Goal, I would have stopped long before. I know most of you are thinking that that would have been a good thing, me stopping, that is. You’re probably right. But I won’t bore you with another paragraph talking about the Goal, and how it’s going to make me a better person, bring about world peace, cure cancer, and do all the other things that people keep telling me need to be done.

Everything past this line will be my feeble attempt to meet the Goal. Most of what was above was the same, but I’ve reached the limit of my caffeine-free writing abilities today. I’m going to fill this space with nothingness. I still have three hundred words and I don’t have a clue what types of words I will be able to type here. I should have written a story. I see that now. When I’m not vacationing, it’s almost impossible to fill up this much space with my thoughts. I just don’t think that much. Things happen to me (and sometimes I help make those things happen), but I don’t live an exciting life, and that’s reflected here. It’s one of the reasons I like to write fiction. I can take the mundane things that happen to me and turn them into something interesting or clever or wordy.

On days like this, I’m going to split my time between writing my thoughts and a brief vignette or story-like device. Doolies is trying to distract me from finishing the last few paragraphs. I’m going to win, though. Maybe. With this last sentence, I’m pushing 1800 words. Trust me, it’s just as painful me to write these words than it is for you to read them. Okay, maybe it’s more painful for you because I don’t actually have to read these words after I put them on the paper. Even as the fly from fingers onto the page, I’m not really reading them. I’m trying to find the next word so I can keep the sentences going to get the next 100 words finished. This was a bad move.

Ah, finally. I arrive at the last paragraph of bullshit, which I have to write between moments of Doolies requesting kisses. Today’s total, as of now of course, is 1912 words. Caffeine is none, zero, zilch, caffeine-free, if you will. Almost done here. I should have gone back to the beginning and added on some additional information to the first few paragraphs that actually talked about something. But seeing as I was too lazy to do that, and I’m approaching the end of this ridiculous exercise, I’m going to call it a good night. We’re sleeping with the windows open, and the cooler air is seeping into the bedroom. Sleep is close. Final word count: two thousand.