Life in LA

Day Eleven...and My Fun Weekend

I know I can't keep writing this but I'm just going to say it one more time: I'm in love with my life these days. I've never been happier. My life has never been more fulfilling, more exciting, and spontaneous, and seemingly contagious.

I had a fantastic weekend. I spent Friday night at home by myself, sitting on the deck, looking up at the stars, breathing, breathing. Felt like it had been weeks since I'd had a night to myself. Was wonderful.

Saturday I saw clients and then picked up my friend Josh in Santa Monica and we went to the lumber yard together! I've decided to redo my deck since I've also decided that Summer '07 is going to be the best summer I've spent yet in Los Angeles. Needed for that is a proper hang out spot. Needed for that, I decided, are wrap-around benches for me and my friends to hang out on after we come back from boogie boarding/rollerblading/biking/sun-bathing.

The deck is currently too...too...intimate? crowded? not suitable?

At first I was just going to buy some benches. I looked at some online. Saw some cool ones. They were pricey. I just want something simple, you know? My next thought was to ask one of my girlfriends' rad and handy husbands to nail something together for me. But then I realized that it might kind of annoying of me to ask them to do something like that. I chewed on the thought of buying benches again...and then I thought, fuck it—I'll build the benches! And that was when I got really excited. I've never really built anything besides Ikea furniture but it can't be that hard to nail some benches together, right?

I was telling Josh this over dinner last week and he got excited too. You know, when does anyone build anything anymore?? Or at least when do people like me and Josh build stuff?? He wanted to help. I was pleased.

So on Saturday Josh and I went to the lumber yard and we had some wood cut. I let Josh handle the math part...two by four by six by what? I spaced out just writing that. We loitered around inside the store while they cut the wood. Josh picked out the proper nails and screws and bolts and whatnot while I tried on tool belts.

On the way to the register I grabbed a big orange work cone. Just to make things official, you know.

We came back to the house and hauled all the wood and screws and the cone out to the sidewalk in front of my house and we got started. First I sent a text to few friends letting them know that I was building things and that we'd gotten a cone. Seemed important that people knew what was going on. Then we screwed all the planks together. (My wrists are still sore as we opted to do it by hand rather than getting the power tools out of the garage, looking for a goddamn extension cord, etc.)

Suddenly Alex rolled up in her convertible. "Good thing you guys got that cone," she shouted with a cheeky grin on her face. At first Alex just supervised from a chair on the sidewalk but when we realized that we'd had the legs for the benches cut about a foot too tall and that we didn't want to go back to the lumber yard to right our mistake, I left Alex & Josh to brainstorm while I hit up the neighbors for a circular saw.

The first neighbor I asked didn't have one. The second neighbor didn't have one either but he knew of two other neighbors who did. However one of the saw owners was in Chicago (who goes to Chicago??) and the other neighbor is rumored to be quite miserly with his saw. Then second neighbor told me that he might have a hand saw. Did I want that? Yes, I did. We could hand saw the wood, right?? I called this over second neighbor's balcony down to Alex & Josh. Sure!

We found some bricks along the path and set things up. And then we sawed some wood. And it felt good.

Thank god we thought to get that cone, huh?

Finally we had to call an end to things. Josh had to get home and we were all pretty worn out.

Building project resumes next weekend. There will be more screwdriving and even some staining! We're all very excited.

The rest of the weekend was pretty great too. I didn't leave the house yesterday. Spent the ENTIRE day in my nightie (and yoga pants & hoodie) writing. I officially have SIX writing projects going. All of which I coudn't be more thrilled about. I wrote my requisite thousand words today (I'm probably going to upload some more audio tomorrow.), saw a client, grocery-shopped, and now I'm running to class.

One more time: I really love my life.

Day Ten

Today was difficult. At first.

I've become wildly distracted by my life in the last few days. People and projects and adventures have had me thinking less and less about writing.

Today I slept late, getting out of bed at almost nine. I drank coffee and swiveled in my chair. I talked on the phone and I uploaded pictures to myspace. I put away clothes and I drank a smoothie and I tried to focus. Finally I turned off the phone. I turned off my email notifier. I took a shower and I gave myself a pep talk. I reminded myself of what I'm doing with my life, why I'm doing this, that I'm writing a book, that I want this more than anything, that this isn't a chore, that sitting down to write, that this time in my life, is a privilege.

And then I sat down and I read through everything I've written so far. It's getting longer and longer. 25 single-spaced pages, over 10K words. It takes a while to read. I paused here and there. I deleted a few things. I reworded things. I recorded a vignette to audio. I was pleased, actually, with everything I read so far, with the back and forth weave of the two story lines I'm threading. I was pleased with a particular sentence here and there. I was pleased to realize that there really does seem to be some good stuff here.

I started writing after a while and it came easily. My head was finally clear. All the other things in my life slipping away. I drifted back into this story, into these words, and I wrote and I wrote. Another thousand words or so. I wrote about a particularly upsetting night in the hospital with my mother. And I tried to be as honest as I could. It was strange to go back there, to that place, to myself at eighteen, curled into a leatherette armchair at my mother's side in a hospital in D.C.

I know where I go tomorrow. I feel centered again.

Now I'll put on some loud music. I'll turn my phone back on. I'll open my email. I'll turn in my chair to look out through the doors open wide to the shimmering blue California sky, and I'll think about how I want to live my life. I'll think about how I am living my life. Exactly the way I want.

Day Nine

Okay. Today was better. It didn't start well but it ended well.

I was tired when I got up this morning. We got back to LA from the San Diego Arcade Fire show last night just after 1am. It was a fantastic show, as only an Arcade Fire show could be, and four girlfriends taking an adventurous trip to San Diego for the night is always a good thing. There was a lot of good old fashioned giggling and shrieking and accidental red-light running and I couldn't remember a time when I've been happier with everything in my life.

Came home to a care package. When was the last time someone sent me a care package?! It was delicious to open. Falling into bed at 1:30, my body still humming from the undercurrent of the 405.

I set the alarm for 8 but woke up at 7:30, already feeling guilty for not being out of bed and drinking coffee yet. It took hours today though for me to produce anything of quality. It took a long time to just wake up. I drank cup after cup of coffee. I swiveled around in my chair. I took a shower. I layed in the sun on the deck.

And finally I started writing. And finally it went well. I wrote around a thousand words again as well as incorporating some old material into the new. The official word count is about 9500. I don't know why I'm so focused on this word count. It's not like it really means anything. I could freak out and want to change it all in a week. I could have in my head that I want the book to be around 60,000 words and it could end up being 85,000.

My last day at my old job was exactly two weeks ago and I can't believe how different my life feels already. I've never written as much in one short time period in my life. I've had countless adventures and so many new people have somehow entered my life. I wrote to a friend today that I wonder if I've been trying to balance this diligent, regimented writer side of me with constant wild nights and spontaneity.

Last night I was really struck again by how much I'm enjoying my life these days. Really, I can't say it enough. My life right now is wonderful. I couldn't be happier.

Tomorrow my friend Josh is coming over and we're going to build things and redo my deck. I'm very excited. My next writing day will be Sunday.

Day Eight

Day Eight has been the least productive writing day so far. Sigh.

I procrastinated for a while this morning. When I finally did get around to writing, I only wrote for about an hour. Granted I wrote about 750 words, and they're definitely good and going in the right direction, but I didn't finish what I was working on and I didn't feel satisfied or complete when I walked away from the computer.

The problem, I think, is that I had a lunch date and I knew that I'd have to leave the house by 12:30. I was really conscious of the time while I was writing and felt like I didn't want to get too invested...and then have to leave. Reminder: no more lunch dates on writing days.

That said, it was great to see my old co-worker, Nicole. I miss her like crazy and lunch was fantastic.

I think I was also distracted because I'm going to see Arcade Fire tonight! Lien, Alex, & Courtney will all be here at 4pm and I'm driving us down to San Diego to catch the show. I LOVE Arcade Fire. I saw them open for David Byrne at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of years ago and it was truly one of the best shows I've ever seen.

We're driving back after the show so I'll no doubt be home late. I still want to really make an effort to get the most out of tomorrow as a writing day though. I feel like what I wrote today will be really easy to build on. Well, it will and it won't. I was entering emotional territory when I stopped today. Then again, this whole resides in an emotional landscape.

Day Seven

It's just past twelve and I've just finished writing for today. I wrote for two hours, a little over 1K words and it went well.

I feel like I'm really settling into a routine of which the shower has become an integral part. I've established a pattern where I'll begin each day by reading back through yesterday's work, or maybe even everything I've written so far, and I'll muse on it all for about ten minutes. I'll swivel around in my chair and sip my coffee. I'll look at the cats on the deck and I'll arch my foot. Then usually a sentence comes to mind and I'll start writing.

I usually write for about an hour after that. I'll write until I reach a stopping point and then I get up, stretch, put my coffee cup in the sink, and walk across the house to the bathroom where I turn on the shower. And it's there, in the shower, where I really think about the book. I think about what I'm going to write next, what I've written so far, how it all fits together. I think about the book as a whole, about the structure and about the narrative arc. It's all beginning to coalesce and it feels good.

I shower slowly, spacing out, soapy loofah in hand, steam all around, my thoughts completely elsewhere. And I stay there until I hit on something, until I know where I'm going next in the manuscript. And then I reach down, turn off the water, towel off, and go back to writing.

When I was finished today I joined the cats on the deck, and stretched out long and lean in the sun, letting the things I wrote about filter softly through me, Neutral Milk Hotel on the stereo, filling, filling, filling me up.

Seven Days, 7359 Words.

Day Six

I'm actually going to revisit Day Five before I move on to how today went.

I recorded and posted the audio of day five's work immediately upon finishing it. The act of writing it, reading it, recording it, and publishing left me breathless. When I was finished I felt as though I had reached deep, deep inside of myself and just fucking ripped something out.

It felt cathartic and wonderful and horrific and in almost every way, it was everything that I want this time to be about. That, in and of itself, made me cry.

I sat in my desk chair and I looked out through the doors to the deck, out at the canals and the sky and my life and the tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt like my entire body was screaming and I wanted it to be and I didn't know what to do.

So I did what normal people do. I got dressed and I drove as fast as I could, revving through each gear, pulling around curves, speeding through the West LA streets, to Whole Foods so that I could do my Sunday grocery shop. And I did exactly that. I bought my bananas and whey protein powder and my red lavender tea and things to make for friends who came for dinner last night and with each aisle that I walked down the screaming inside subsided a little more and I thought about going for a run when I got home except by the time I was walking through the parking lot, by the time I was unloading groceries into the trunk, I was struck, really floored suddenly, by the realization that I'm doing everything that I ever wanted to be doing in my life. I'm actually living my dream. And I'm not doing ANYTHING that I don't want to be doing.

So yeah, Day Six went well. Coffee, smoothie, emails, the usual, some mild procrastination surrounding an exciting project you'll hear about sooner than later, and then I quickly wrote 1100 words and ran to the clinic to see a client, yoga after that, and then class. Home now. Bathtime and then bedtime.

Check out my awesome friend Jake!

Day Five

Whoa.

I just stopped writing. I had no idea of what was going to come out of me today.

Until about an hour and a half ago, I was sincerely doubtful that I would get anything written today.

I had a pretty intense weekend. The last couple of days have just been nonstop. Just filled with an incredible amount of spontaneity, adventure, and friends. I was out and up until 5:30am on Friday night, at the clinic and seeing clients by 9:30 the next morning and then didn't get home until 11 last night.

All this to say that even after last night's eight hours of sleep, I woke up today feeling disoriented and more than a little off course. I puttered around the house for hours, drinking coffee, trying to wake up, talking on the phone, listening to music, thinking about how I really didn't want to waste today as a writing day but feeling absolutely resistant to getting started.

Finally, I turned off my phone, forced myself to read through everything I've written so far, and then I just started writing. It came far easier than I anticipated.

Here it is:

(You might need to download QuickTime.)

Day Four

Day Four has been fantastic so far.

Got up at quarter of eight, made coffee, meditated, put on Band of Horses, did some emailing, bought tickets to see BoH open for The Decemberists at the Hollywood Bowl in July, and then got to work.

I reread yesterday's work, didn't change anything, started a new page, and immediately ripped out 1200 words. I wrote a pretty searing piece about being in the hospital in D.C., about seeing my mother for the first time after hearing that she really might die.

I wrote it straight out without taking a break.

And then I put Band of Horses back on and did some push-ups. And sit-ups. It's important to build core strength when writing a book, I think.

I'm going to take a shower now. And then more writing.

I need to take advantage of any extra time. Day Five won't take place until Sunday. I've got clients tomorrow morning and then a whole cadre of Saturday social events to attend to.

Here's to a successful Week One.

Day Three

Listen to some of what I wrote today:

(You might need to download QuickTime.)

This piece ultimately might not survive past tomorrow's reread but here it is for now.

I've always felt the need to read my work out loud as I go along. I've been doing it for as long as I can remember...for as long as I've been writing...since middle school, I guess. I used to record myself in high school reading my poems out loud. Wish I still had those tapes. Cringe-worthy, I'm sure.

I find it incredibly helpful to read out loud. Doing so really helps me explore the diction and the tone that I'm working to achieve.

Is it strange for me to put this audio clip up? Is it strange for me to put such a fresh piece of writing up? I feel fine with it but the other night a writer friend of mine told me that he is always really amazed by how willing I am to share something that I've only just written. For some reason I just don't feel strange about it. Even if I know that I'll probably change aspects of it.

I'm enjoying documenting this process. Makes it all feel that much more official. I'm really writing my book!

Ride-Along Part II

Breaking Leather Part II, about my ride-along with the Inglewood PD is up on The Nervous Breakdown.