Time Of Your Life (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Writing Process)

I was hoping to make some progress on my cancer story before writing another blog post, and I assumed that starting my story would be futile until I corresponded with someone who has either had a brain tumor, knows someone who has/had one, or has treated brain tumor patients. But I wasn't waiting, not really.
I wasn't mentally prepared to write.

My little one's ever-changing schedule was wearing me out, and I had to squeeze in a nap during what could have been my writing time. At night I've been staying up until 4am (as usual) but even with energy drinks keeping my mind as alert as possible I've been too discombobulated to start working on my story. So I've been working on other things instead: clearing out my sports memorabilia, doing chores around the house, and reading a lot of YA books. I started and finished three in the past week or so--a personal best for sure. But all those things I've been doing instead of writing soured my mood and sent me spiraling into this deep depression where the only thing that made me feel good was picking up a book and escaping to someone else's story world. I can't even explain how I got so depressed, because it wasn't any one big thing. It was just a string of minor annoyances, but those minor annoyances kept piling up one on top of the other, until it was a great big stack of FML.

I've spent the past two weeks lamenting how much harder it will be for me to write a novel because I have to work around my adult ADD. I always have the same conversation with myself: Can I do this? Is this possible? 

No, I tell myself. And then I spin the wheel o' excuses: no time, no help, no life experience, no education...and the ADD. That's been on my mind a lot lately--even before I read a webMD article listing 10 common symptoms of the disorder. I won't bore you with all of them (not in this post anyway) but I've mentioned two of them already:

Problems Starting A Task People with Adult ADD often drag their feet when starting tasks that require a lot of attention. How often do I talk about writing and how often do I actually write? Yeah...

Angry Outbursts Many people with adult ADD are quick to explode over minor issues. Like this morning, when my little one woke me up more than an hour earlier than normal. Did I worry about why she was awake early, and is she okay? Nope. I was agitated because I only got four hours' sleep (my fault, not hers) and as I angrily threw off the covers and stumbled out of bed I realized that my plan to go to bed early every night so that I can write my story in the morning before my little one wakes up will not fucking work. 

And then, after more than a week of giving in to hopelessness and frustration I made a decision. My father-in-law comes every day at Noon to watch my daughter so that I can shower, get dressed, go to the post office, take a nap...whatever I need. And he stays until she takes her afternoon nap around 3:30.

Why am I not working on my story then? Usually when I'm not too exhausted or busy I take a walk for an hour or more. Why not just walk to the library and write until 2:30 or so and have a late lunch?

That's what I did today, and that's how I finally managed to start my story. Okay, so it's my fourth different beginning and at this point I just assume that none of it will actually be useful. But it felt like I was getting somewhere. I felt it even before I reached the library, when I thought of a working title for the story:
Time Of Your Life.
Why? Because that's what senior year is supposed to be, right? And also because when Charlie finds out he's going to die he becomes hyper aware of the amount of time he has left to live.

I bet 1,000 bottles of Mountain Dew that this will NOT be the permanent title. But it's better than Senior Year, amirite?


So yeah, I wrote another beginning, working around the first of many gaps in my cancer knowledge to the tune of 1,053 words (I expect to pass 1,500 by the end of the day.) And as I was attempting to apply the general writing knowledge I absorbed from reading this and this and this I started to inject personal experiences into the story, just as a placeholder if nothing else. And a funny thing happened.


I remembered why I love to write.


At the beginning I was just describing background characters, people who might also be in the waiting room of a Neurologist. One of those characters was a 14 year-old girl whom I will refer to as 'Soccer Star'. At first, Soccer Star was just there because I didn't want the room to be empty (I hate it when movies/TV shows try to act like the world only exists for the protag.) Then she became a distraction from Charlie's fears about potentially having a concussion. Then he projected his fears onto this younger girl he didn't know anything about. Then (in his mind at least) she caught him staring at her.

And then I thought, wouldn't it be a kick if they ran into each other at school the next day--which would be her first day of freshman year and his first day of senior year. The encounter would have more value to the story than just a brief moment of (potential) awkwardness; it could be a vehicle for Charlie to lie to his best friend about having a concussion and not a brain tumor.

(In between would be a ton of pages about Charlie hearing the diagnosis, denying it, accepting it, letting it sink in, and starting to figure out how to deal with it. All stuff I can't tackle yet.)

So that's not a bad start, right? Soccer Star bumps into Charlie and his BFF Jay, she recognizes Charlie from the Neurologists's office, he's forced to disclose his 'concussion' and learns that she's much too familiar with concussions herself.

And that was supposed to be the end of Soccer Star, other than a potential "Hi, Senior Buddy" "Hi, Soccer Star" type exchange in the hallway at some point down the road. Not important enough to give her a name, but possibly important enough to make Charlie's (future) girlfriend Amber a little suspicious.

And then I thought.... what if Soccer Star IS Amber?!?!

Because the (re-)introduction of an old friend of an ex-girlfriend never felt all that organic to me, the fight with her boyfriend from a rival town felt cliched, and her sudden and excessive interest (is it guilt? reigniting an old crush? both?) makes her appear needy and weak.

That opened up a thousand new avenues for potential exploration: How would Charlie have had a concussion in the first place? He could still fight the rival boyfriend and show how fearless and resilient he is, but then there would be two girls....how would that work? What if Charlie and Amber--Soccer Star Amber--bond over feeling bored/isolated from not being able to play sports, and she becomes Charlie's confidant (a wise younger sister-type.) Then when frustrations mount over Charlie's inability to be the boyfriend that his girlfriend deserves, maybe there's a moment of weakness and the younger girl makes a play for him. Then instead of simply being a good boyfriend with a secret he's a bad boyfriend with two secrets.

Did I just blow your mind?

Yeah.

I love writing.