Afterthoughts

So I wrote a little over 1200 words. All things considered, that's a solid amount, but it never feels like enough. The day I wrote over 2000 was good enough: many words were written, and many plot points were addressed.

And still, the world is too big. I often wish the world were like math: complicated and sometimes esoteric, but, with sheer force of will and continuous, obsessive application, you can make it work.

I often tell my math students that, at their age, I was no smarter than they are. The only advantage I had was that I enjoyed math enough to devote piles of hours to wrestling with it. Really truly, like I am with puzzles, I loved attempting and re-attempting problems for hours until I finally understood. Life, however, requires you to wait. I hate waiting.

Here's the paradox though: I'm not formally impatient. If there's a task that requires repetition over a long period of time, I'm totally down with that. However, I hate plain waiting, the kind of waiting where there's nothing you can do but wait, where there's nothing you can do but do other things, where you can't do anything about the problem/task itself. I get the impression that a lot of life is like that; I have a lot of humility in store for me.

It's probably just my lust for control.

In other news, I don't know how "Cupid" came to be my favorite poem. I like a lot of them, but that is the one I share by default. The rhymes are solid. It's relatively short. I think my favorite factor is that it's a subtle but innovative reimagining of the Cupid story. I dunno. Long story short, I like it.

My story is nearly at 40000 words. Just for the first draft, I'll probably have to double that. If I maintain my current pace of roughly 1200 words per week, I'll manage that in about 34 weeks. I totally just want the book to be finished tomorrow, or at least the first draft finished tomorrow. It's a charming story, and I really am very fond of my characters, but I am more and more ready to move on.

For now, I'll keep plugging along.