revelations

I think I need to finally face the fact that I've gotten extremely lazy. I don't actually work that hard, I have 3-day weekends, yet I seem to be exhausted a lot and I never seem to have enough time to sit around and do nothing.

Perhaps the problem is that I've gotten used to being inefficient and unproductive and therefore never get much done and have no way to account for all the time I'm wasting. I don't really even write anymore--not emails, not blog posts, and certainly not the novel.

So WTF am I doing with my time??? Reading, sleeping, watching TV, eating. Damn. Sounds like a vacation. How do I feel about that? Dissatisfied, I think. I think I need to be more productive.

Also had another revelation yesterday: a big part of why I want to be a professional writer is because I think it's a job where I can be my whole, unedited self rather than feeling the need to dress a certain way or employ a personality filter or put on a mask of professionalism.

Perhaps not my whole self in every piece of writing--that would be impossible--but at least to have an outlet for all the facets of my personality.

I think as a writer I could begin to more fully explore and accept myself, my humanity, my fallibility. Fallibility is charming in a narrator...to an extent.

Speaking of adorable, fallible narrators. I spent most of last week reading from the Janet Evanovich series that inspired me to begin writing my trashy novel. I'm completely addicted.

The one thing I don't like is that there is an illusion of progress (regarding personal growth of the protagonist and her romantic relationships) during the course of a novel and then the next one in the series starts out pretty much back at ground zero. As a reader I find that frustrating. I want the next novel to begin where the last one left off, not back at the beginning again.

And a quick note on yesterday's post: gazpacho is indeed made mainly from tomatoes, but they also add cucumber, which for me ruins it.