Day 3

11:36 a.m. Today is Thursday, and Thursday is usually the day of the week when I crash. By that I mean I usually get slightly depressed, listless, overwhelmed or simply meh in general. So far, so good. I have a full day scheduled: things to do, stuff to get, including the 500 words I need to write today. I haven't started on those words, yet, obviously. We'll see.

11:50 a.m. It's really kind of strange, kind of like a biorhythm clock but on a weekly schedule. Every week, by the time Wednesday or Thursday rolls around, give or take a half-day or so, my mood would plummet. There were times when I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning at all. Fortunately, I'm used to this and I can often see that happening, and then make an effort to lift myself up by the afternoon. Sometimes I'd feel completely paralyzed until way past 4 p.m. but eventually I'd come out of it. I wonder if anyone has similar experiences. But anyway, it's now 11:50 and I'm doing okay. No crushing depression or broodiness yet.

That may all change when I have to get my hair cut.

1:48 p.m. Not much of a lunch break and I need to get my hair cut. It's long overdue (pun intended). Sometimes I do wonder why I don't cut my hair more frequently. usually by the third week, my hair would be almost unmanageable and I hate to put three tons of hair products on it. I'm the kind of "wash, dry and go" kind of guy. The least I have to deal with my hair, the better. However, I look awful with a buzz cut so super-short, super-wash-and-dry hair is out of the question. I also have straight hair, so long hair is also out of the question. That gives me a montly window of maybe about three weeks of manageable hair. But why oh why do I always wait so long to get a cut? Days since last cut: 45 days. Yup, I think it's time for the scissors.

5:15 p.m. Finally I get to work on the WIP. First I feel I need to expand on an earlier scene. Something is missing: something important. I also had kind of an epiphany of what needs to be added, another small twist that would make things even more intense. Now, I don't know if I'm overdoing this, but I think cranking up the dramatic quotient is never a bad thing -- I can always scale it back down. But I can't do any of that if I didn't write it.

What's nice about that is I just added another 300 words to that scene. 3/5 of my work done for the day.

7:05 p.m. writing about rape is no fun. I hate violence, especially violence against women and children, so I always seem to dread and avoid these scenes, but it has to be done. Now I'm spent and I need to find some food and get that stuff out of my head.

362 days, 184000 words to go