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Self pity thread again, consider yourselves warned.
Having a weird moment. Life is having a weird moment. Having resigned myself to hermitude, interspersed by moments of fury against my renal system my two major things are these...
Writing. Progressing ok after a scare this week. When I planned this novel I'd attempted one beforehand that sort of fizzled out, after realising that I was writing it out of venom and naivity more than anything. So my current one, something a little darker, though a little more consistent and human. I planned it in 12 chapters and assumed I'd write between 5000 and 7000 words each... but shockingly enough I tend to be too concise! At the current rate I'd only end up with 40'000 words for the whole novel, whereas it needs to be between 70'000 - 110'000. So anyway I've spend the last ****ing week restructuring it, and now have 25 sections that puts me on course for ~80k which is nice but grrr extra workload. Don't get me wrong, I feel better that I'm actually working on it and making progress but I started writing it in July and said I'd be finished by September, then xmas, then my birthday which is on tuesday (a deadline that isn't going to happen). Everyone keeps telling me to stop setting myself deadlines but hey easy enough to say that.
And then there's the meds. I had a really bad experience with venlafaxine (aka Effexor XL) so I was switched to carbamazepine (Tegretol). This is a weird one, I'm reacting much better. I'm not really affected much yet because it's only been a few weeks, but I am much calmer. It takes a while to get up to the theraputic dose, but my shrink tells me that I'll likely be on this stuff for years and that it's a "commitment drug" (a terrible thing to say to someone half your age).
But ****, what am I doing (how neat was that, repeating the title?
)? Years on this stuff? Kind of makes me feel that I'll have years of this. Yes I know that's not true and things have this habit of changing when you least expect them, but at this moment, what do I really have? A novel who's chances for publication are slight at best. Not that it really matters, I just want to finish the damn thing.
I know what people are likely to say. Get out, travel, take breaks. I'm told to lighten up by some, to stop treating life as a joke by others. Went into town this morning to take back a library book and get a haircut and was literally afraid of walking out of the door. As in properly fearful, racing heart, the works. I must have looked like a complete idiot, black coat, black leather gloves, black scarf, black trousers, black turtleneck, black shoulderbag, glancing over my shoulder like a soap salesman in a dutch prison.
Four years ago, the plan was that by now I'd be in my second year at uni, studying astrophysics with a group of professional nymphomaniac assasins at my beck and call. Food for thought eh?
Having a weird moment. Life is having a weird moment. Having resigned myself to hermitude, interspersed by moments of fury against my renal system my two major things are these...
Writing. Progressing ok after a scare this week. When I planned this novel I'd attempted one beforehand that sort of fizzled out, after realising that I was writing it out of venom and naivity more than anything. So my current one, something a little darker, though a little more consistent and human. I planned it in 12 chapters and assumed I'd write between 5000 and 7000 words each... but shockingly enough I tend to be too concise! At the current rate I'd only end up with 40'000 words for the whole novel, whereas it needs to be between 70'000 - 110'000. So anyway I've spend the last ****ing week restructuring it, and now have 25 sections that puts me on course for ~80k which is nice but grrr extra workload. Don't get me wrong, I feel better that I'm actually working on it and making progress but I started writing it in July and said I'd be finished by September, then xmas, then my birthday which is on tuesday (a deadline that isn't going to happen). Everyone keeps telling me to stop setting myself deadlines but hey easy enough to say that.
And then there's the meds. I had a really bad experience with venlafaxine (aka Effexor XL) so I was switched to carbamazepine (Tegretol). This is a weird one, I'm reacting much better. I'm not really affected much yet because it's only been a few weeks, but I am much calmer. It takes a while to get up to the theraputic dose, but my shrink tells me that I'll likely be on this stuff for years and that it's a "commitment drug" (a terrible thing to say to someone half your age).
But ****, what am I doing (how neat was that, repeating the title?
)? Years on this stuff? Kind of makes me feel that I'll have years of this. Yes I know that's not true and things have this habit of changing when you least expect them, but at this moment, what do I really have? A novel who's chances for publication are slight at best. Not that it really matters, I just want to finish the damn thing.I know what people are likely to say. Get out, travel, take breaks. I'm told to lighten up by some, to stop treating life as a joke by others. Went into town this morning to take back a library book and get a haircut and was literally afraid of walking out of the door. As in properly fearful, racing heart, the works. I must have looked like a complete idiot, black coat, black leather gloves, black scarf, black trousers, black turtleneck, black shoulderbag, glancing over my shoulder like a soap salesman in a dutch prison.
Four years ago, the plan was that by now I'd be in my second year at uni, studying astrophysics with a group of professional nymphomaniac assasins at my beck and call. Food for thought eh?
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