Random thoughts - by Lauren Hough - Badreads

I’m in it now. Goddamn. I can’t hold a conversation. I don’t want to lose it. I pull over and write myself emails when I think of a thing. I wake up and scribble in my notebooks. I can’t stop writing the thing. Don’t know where I’m going or if this is working or if we’ll end up keeping this part. But I’m writing. I don’t like falling asleep. Don’t like watching anything that might shut off the narrative. It feels like if I just keep going, I can keep going. It worked when I was writing essays. That stupid pounding out sentences that went nowhere, just listing things that happened would turn into this. This part where I don’t have to make myself write, I have to force myself to stop writing. And it was fine, when I was writing an essay. Four or eleven thousand words later, I’d be done. I could go to sleep. I could take a few days to do laundry and clean up the seltzer cans, catch up with friends, answer texts, answer emails. Be a human. I don’t know how to do this with writing a book. A hundred dudes will have the urge to tell me Kerouac wrote On the Road in two weeks. I don’t have speed and I’m not writing On the Road. So I take a day off. Call my nephew and go see the new baby. Go to lit event I stupidly agreed to because I still can’t say no. See a friend. And it’s gone. I’m back to forcing myself to open the laptop. I only know the crazy way to do this. (I am not asking for advice.)

I’m in it now. Goddamn. I can’t hold a conversation. I don’t want to lose it. I pull over and write myself emails when I think of a thing. I wake up and scribble in my notebooks. I can’t stop writing the thing. Don’t know where I’m going or if this is working or if we’ll end up keeping this part. But I’m writing. I don’t like falling asleep. Don’t like watching anything that might shut off the narrative. It feels like if I just keep going, I can keep going. It worked when I was writing essays. That stupid pounding out sentences that went nowhere, just listing things that happened would turn in