Friday One Year Ago and Friday Last Night

A year ago today, it would have been a Friday.  My spouse was teaching in person on Friday nights, and I tried to connect with friends in  person while he taught.  A year ago, I had plans to meet with a group of friends from my AiFL days, my quilt group that didn't quilt as much as we once did.  We were going to have dinner at a McAlister's Deli near the house of one of them.

As news of the new virus broke, one of our friends decided not to meet us for dinner.  I went to her house on my way to dinner, and we watched the president's news conference where he declared a national emergency.  Did we really watch it together?  It seems like we did, but we may have just talked about the fact that he planned to do it.

My friend was more concerned with germs from strangers than germs from me, so we hugged goodbye.  Within the coming months, she and her spouse would decide to move to be closer to their only child in Chicago, and they would sell their house and go.  I didn't see them in person through this process, and even when they packed up the car and left for the last time, we didn't see each other.  I didn't realize that I was hugging her goodbye in a larger sense on that Friday night in March.

I realize that many people hate these "one year ago" type posts, but I've always been drawn to them, so I'll continue to write them.  But I also want to record the events of this year.

Last night I had planned to write while my spouse was teaching.  I had taken a week off from writing my apocalyptic novel; my spouse didn't teach a week ago because it was spring break.  I went to the file where the manuscript lives, and it hadn't been updated since mid-February, but I know that I wrote over 1000 words 2 weeks ago.  Hmm.  When I opened the manuscript, those words had vanished, and I couldn't exactly remember what I had written.

Dinner was ready, so I didn't start reconstructing, and then after dinner, I decided to see if I could find the version of the novel in the recently opened list of documents.  Hurrah--there it was.  And then, after saving a copy in multiple places, I tried to figure out if the computer had stored it elsewhere.  It had.  But why?

It distresses me a bit, makes me wonder what else has vanished.  I read the 1000 words I had written and began to remember, but I couldn't remember where I had thought I would go next.  I wrote a sentence.  I stared at the screen.  I decided that it's time for a new approach.

I started 2021 with a goal to write 1000 words a week, 1000 words of my apocalyptic novel.  I've been writing all of those words on Friday night while my spouse teaches.  In a way, it's been exhilarating.  But now, I'm thinking I will try a different approach.

My new goal will be to return to the novel at least 5 days a week, to write at least one sentence, knowing that I will probably write more sentences.  I am now more comfortable with my cloud storage, so I could work on the manuscript during a wider variety of times, like during my lunch break at work.

There is some part of my brain, the tired part, that wonders why I'm doing this at all.  One of the disadvantages of being on Twitter is that I'm aware of how many people are working on writing projects, people who are younger than I am, people who have agents and mentors.  I'm aware of how many people seem to have stopped reading anything longer than a tweet or an Instagram post.

Long ago, I decided to keep writing even if I knew I would never be published.  The process brings me joy.  And with this current novel, I don't know how it's going to turn out, and some part of me writes out of curiosity to see where the story goes.

I'll be interested to see if it's easier to keep the thread of the novel when I'm returning to it daily instead of once a week.  Will I still have time to percolate scenes in my brain before writing them?  Stay tuned!