Nano 12

A bit late, yes. It is mid-afternoon on the following day. But I spent many many house last night working on reading Inheritance, which is finally starting to get good. Paolini is just too wordy sometimes. I could chop his 800 page monstrosity into 500 pages and have it be just as good of a story with much less unnecessary down time.

Which actually sort of relates to what I was getting on here to say.

One of the daily aspects of my life, an aspect that is so common that I barely notice it anymore, is that of me missing half of what's happening around because of being completely distracted by other things that are

SQUIRREL!

around me.

I joke about it. You have to. But it really does happen, and far too frequently. While my home teachers were over here earlier, 5 or 6 times I suddenly realized that I had been in lala land, and I had absolutely no idea how much time had passed since I stopped listening to what was being said. (Though luckily it usually ends up being just a couple seconds.)

It wasn't because it was boring, or I didn't like my teachers, or anything. It's just that my conscious brain and my subconscious brain very rarely want to be doing the same activity at the same time. And when they are, it's not always what I'm supposed to be doing.

At work it happens too. I'll take a book from my stack, go to put it away, and glance at the cover. I find it interesting, so I look at it for a few seconds. And then very suddenly I realize that I have no idea whatsoever of how long I've been staring at the book cover. It could be minutes, and I just don't know.

What was the point of all that?

Because writing stories, especially when I'm in my groove, doesn't get that way. I mean, sure, sometimes I don't know where things are going. I have a slow word count day, and I stare at the screen long enough to burn holes in it. It happens then.

But when I'm typing up a storm... that's one of the few things that really, truly focuses me. I can think fast, I can brainstorm, I can come up with great ideas, and I can type them all out, and my focus doesn't fizzle out on me.

I guess that's part of why I like it so much.

Last night I made a goal to break 27k and I totally did it. Not only that, but I spent the last half of the evening watching Sound of Music. I kicked some serious butt.

Daily: 3,119

Total: 27,067