I just turned in an application today for a grant I’ve been piecing together for six weeks. In the grand scheme of things, six weeks isn’t a long time. But with a full-time job, working some overnights, trying to wrap up my first play in I-hesitate-to-say-how-long required a lot of emotional energy.

I had no idea how much I had given to this particular project until I discovered I could barely sit up straight once I got back from the post office. Even after basically passing out from exhaustion for several hours (I still call that a nap if it’s less than 8 hours) I couldn’t think straight. I was completely grumpy, irrational, and dulled down. Nouns left me. Everything “sucked.” Especially the play I’d just written. It’s a strange sort of post-partum that hits me everytime I complete a new full-length work. I disparage everything I’ve ever done and then cry for awhile and get on the pity pot and whine some more.

The man definitely wanted to run away. He didn’t.

Hours later, I still can barely function. I know that I just need to give myself a few days to relax…but I’m not used to downtime. It feels strange to take time to heal, to get my nouns back. I have half of the next play roughed out, and I think I should just jump right into it. Maybe I’ll scribble some adjectives and verbs. Hopefully, though, I’ll piddle around, send e-mails, read for fun, watch some Netflix.

Ha.

I feel unsettled without a project to work on. Untethered. Adrift.

Give me 24 hours and I’ll be back in my studio, chasing the dream again.

For a long time, my math skills were comparable to my writing abilities. I never liked math as much, but I was good at it. I still like the idea of math. But not so much the numbers. Or at least, not as they apply to calculating time.

For example, I’ve been having a distressingly difficult time figuring out my hours at work. I was advised to break down the hours I worked each day by the clock. So Monday’s hours would encompass 12:01 am to 11:59 pm. Logical. Except I work overnight shifts. And probably shouldn’t be trying to calculate my hours when I get home in the morning.

Here’s the dilemma: I go to work at 11 on Friday night and get off at 7 am Saturday morning. So that’s 1 hour for Friday and 7 for Saturday. Except I go back to work at 7pm on Saturday and get off at 7 am Sunday morning. OK: So that’s still 1 for Friday, we’re up to 12 for Saturday, and now we’re adding 7 for Sunday. Until I go back to work at 6pm Sunday and work until midnight. OK….1 for Fri, 12 for Saturday, 13 for Sunday. It adds up, but I still feel like I’m working 8 hours Fri, 12 on Sat and 6 on Sun.

And then came daylight savings time. I was almost apoplectic.

Worse: the elliptical dilemma. I was doing 10 miles in 48 minutes, and thought that meant 4.8 minute miles. I should just be able to take off a zero, right? But then I did 10 miles in 51 minutes–a 3 minute total difference from my earlier time. OK, so obviously I can’t have done 4.8 minute miles because the difference between 4.8 minute miles and 5.1 minute miles is 30 seconds each mile. Which adds up to more than a 3 minute total difference.

I still haven’t figured out how fast I was going.

Or why I can’t just subtract a zero. (Damn you, 60 seconds)

Worse, I can’t figure out why I can’t figure, anymore.

I’ll just have to accept that there are accountants and there are unpublished novelists. The dream is that one day I will write all the time and stop having to calculate the hours I work at all.

Last weekend I sat down to do a close table edit of the last 150 pages of my novel, and the next book insisted on itself, instead. It started pouring out of me, in screenplay form, in a fully-realized way I thought would take at least 6 months of outlining to achieve.

Sometimes, it’s just that easy.

Of course, it helps that this is a story I’m intimate with, having written it to death, already. I tried all kinds of convolutions, over the course of five years–the story never worked. So I put it down for seven years. Now the story seems to be telling itself. 

Once upon a time, I would panic about a gift like this:  I would think I had to keep going, going, if I put the pages down, the muse will never come back–that my work was at the mercy of whim. I still have my superstitions. I write with the same pen until it runs out. I don’t talk too much about plot. But I am not afraid that the words will leave me. I’ve paid my price on this one!

It’s beautiful when the writing machine hits three lemons and the silver dollars start spilling out….