Fifth Draft

Week 4, 1.27-2.3.19

Greetings! It’s time for another look at the previous week, including the high ups and the low downs.

This will go live on Mondays now, with my writing blog going up on Wednesdays. I tried making this a Sunday night thing, but the weekend always seems to be taken from me. I keep track of the week in Apple Notes, this way I can add bits from both my phone and laptop. When it comes time to publish I just need to Copy+Paste it over, then do minor fixes to formatting, hyperlinks, and spelling. (Lots of that.)

For some reason, I couldn’t make Sundays work.

So! Mondays and Wednesdays. Blog days.

Sunday, 1.27.29
The Royal Rumble was today.

This is WWE’s annual event centered around 30 Men/Women Battle Royals, wherein the goal is to toss your other opponents over the top rope. Both feet need to touch the ground.

You wouldn’t think this little tidbit is crucial, but multiple times during the match this one comes into play. Competitors holding on for dear career, one foot. agingerly touching the ground, and the audience gasping in anticipation.

Chase Field was packed with “48,000” people. I use quotes because the WWE has had a history of inflating their numbers in the past.

To hear the roar of the crowd when our favorites won is something watching it on TV doesn’t give you. Truly, it’s one of those things that makes you realize why so many people love going to this kind of thing live. We sat along the 3rd base line, which were fairly parallel to the action. Plus, we had the wonder of Big-Sceen-O-Vision to help catch any small storytelling bits we might have missed..

My nephew’s favorite wrestler lost…

Okay, also MY favorite wrestler. You don’t forget those moments easily. Not the action, but the reactions. Seeing him sit down with his hands over his mouth as his guy got pinned. 1-2-3. Those are moments that become etched in your mind for years.

I subscribe to Brain Pickings Weekly, a newsletter curated by Maria Popova. Every week she sends the best quotes and writings from history’s greatest minds.

Typically, not all apply to me. This week, she reflected on a piece by Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962), an artist whom I was not familiar with.

He wrote regarding being who we are, unashamed, unabashedly, in the face of destiny:

You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.

When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god… A man who has recognized his destiny never tries to change it. The endeavor to change destiny is a childish pursuit that makes men quarrel and kill one another… All sorrow, poison, and death are alien, imposed destiny. But every true act, everything that is good and joyful and fruitful on earth, is lived destiny, destiny that has become self.

Read the whole piece here.

Wednesday, 1.30.19
I awoke to the horror that I missed a freelance writing assignment the night before. Typically, assignments are sent to me through my editor and also to turn them in by a certain time.

I missed my deadline.

It doesn’t happen a whole lot. In fact almost never. So when it does happen, because I missed a notification on my phone, it makes me get angry at technology to the point I feel like breaking it with a hammer. My lunch break was taken up with completing this assignments.

Because as I’ve learned, the paid work has to come first.

I put off Project: Grey for just a little while longer. I’m getting a little more worried if I’m going to hit my deadline.

Thursday, 1.31.19
Spoiler Alert: I did not.

Friday, 2.1.19
I wrote over 2,000 words for Project: GREY.

I felt the rush, you know, that push, where the pressure is on for you to finish something.

Honestly, that’s how I survived most of college.

Over 2,000 words done.May not seem like much in comparison to what professional authors get out on a daily basis, but I can’t compare my destiny to them, lest I make Mr. Hesse upset.

I wonder if I can push out the last 5 or 6k tomorrow.

Saturday, 2.2.19
Spoiler Alert: I did.

Saturday afternoon was spent at Changing Hands Bookstore in their First Draft Book Bar, one of my favorite places to be. There was no negotiating. No compromise. No, “I’ll only do a few pages then head home or mosey on over to the Science Fiction section.”

There was only, “Finish. This. Book.”

And, I did. Project: GREY is in the can. The 1st draft is done and printed, waiting to have 2nd draft edits. I’m going to wait a week, pull it out of my top desk drawer, then take a red pen to it, or blue, doesn’t matter, and begin fixing it all up. This is the first of what I hope to be many completed writing projects this year.

And that’s the thing, right? There’s momentum after it. Once it was done and I got home I felt invincible. Like, I could chase this feeling for the rest of my life. It’s been so long since I’ve done completed a writing project, I forgot what it felt like.

I wrote a book.

I can’t keep saying that enough. It’s power. There’s power in those words.

Sunday, 2.3.19
Since this is going live on Mondays now, I will include an extra Sunday on here.
It was spent watching Tom Brady win his 6th Super Bowl in a sad, sad fashion after playing Kingdom Hearts III all morning.

Not a bad way to begin a week.

Thanks for reading,

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Contact: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com

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