Quiet again - and restrategizing

I've been quiet here on this blog - and in terms of production on the novel itself - since the end of Novel III class at UCLA Extension.

I could blame part of it on the FIFA World Cup tournament going on, which I've followed quite closely. I could blame part of it on my work schedule, which now takes me out to the desert for days at a time.

But the real culprit seems to be that I've been feeling exhausted since midway through the class. A personal upheaval had shaken me up, and as a result, my recent writing tendency has been to pamper Sarah and spare her from the same life troubles that I've been going through. I just can't bring myself to throw homophobic insults, economic disasters, fashion mistakes, and other mishaps into Sarah's life at this time. I'm so exhausted that right now, I cannot even bother to log back onto the class website and retrieve my classmates' and instructor's suggestions before the website shuts down.

Another issue seems to be the format of the class. I had to write 50 brand-new pages (or more exactly, about 10,000 words) from scratch, in sequential order. I've found that I work better when I write distinct scenes and chain them together into a story. In the class, I was writing lots of boring narrative just to fill out the requirements, and that left me AND the classmates less than happy. I would rather have a crazy scene pop up like a lightbulb in my head (for example, Sarah's visit to the sperm bank shortly before surgery), write it out, then when I have enough of those scenes, try to connect them together.

Less than a week remains until my Seattle trip. I hope it inspires and rejuvenates my personal life - and my writing life. Flying on a United Airlines plane - Sarah's former workplace - will be one step in the right direction.