12:52 a.m. - 2014-02-08
more progress
So ... it seems that the best time for me to write is after the kids, and A, go to bed -- which sucks. It sucks because that means she goes to sleep alone. She doesn't like to sleep alone and it makes me feel really guilty.
Our house is small and we have two children, two adults and eight indoor pets living in it. When it's too cold to write on the sunporch, it's virtually impossible for me to get "in the zone" to write. I have to put myself in an imaginary place and time and be able to see, smell, hear, taste and breathe it, and there is not a 30-second period when A's awake that there isn't a barking dog, a scratching cat, a yelling child, or some other obnoxious interruption. The only time the dogs shut up is when they're asleep, and they don't go to sleep until A goes to bed. A of course wants me to go to bed with her. This, in a nutshell, is exactly how novels DON'T get written.
(I used to set my alarm and get up at 2 am to write, but that didn't work either. Seems like a kid and a couple of animals always got up too. So much for that.)
So tonight A went to bed alone, the dogs finally shut the fuck up, and I churned out another four pages.
(I will not be sad when those dogs die. I know A loves them, and I am actually pretty fond of them, but the barking drives me up the fucking wall. Thank god they're 12 and 13. I know it is horrible to think that, but I think it every day. A says that when they go, she doesn't want another dog. I intend to hold her to that unless we can find one without vocal cords.)
Anyway, making some progress writing-wise. My book, more than a little boosely based on my childhood (of course)is about a 12-year-old girl who murders her abusive father with a hatchet. She doesn't get charged with a crime because no one can find the body, including the girl herself when she goes back to look for it. In fact, no one knows if he's actually dead, including his daughter. Did she really kill him, or does she just think she did? If she didn't, where is he?
Also it is about the miscarried dreams that led a daughter to attack her father in the first place ... because no little boy ever says, "When I grow up, I want to abuse my children," and no little girl ever says, "When I grow up, I want to murder my father with a hatchet." How do things go so wrong?
It is loosely based on my childhood because I used to make list of the pros and cons of killing my abusive father, although (pinky swear) I didn't do it. I really thought that was the only way my brothers and I would all survive to adulthood. I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had gone through with it... It has been 16 years since I lived under my father's roof and I think I only stopped expecting him to kill me three or four years ago.
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