Ira Heinichen's Blog, page 41

Day 3,942: Like Nine Thousand

Much less wiped today for whatever reason. I think it might be because I didn’t go so hard on the reading. That definitely taxes the brain, at least when it’s educational reading, like I was doing yesterday. Or, maybe, it’s just the ups and downs of my moon and my energy levels. That could also totally be it. I am definitely pushing right now on all cylinders.

The book sits at 280 pages today. Pretty confident it will wrap up in the next 120. Good-sized book. Some fun scenes today. I dig drop...

Day 3,941: Brush

Need to work with Joy on having her face brushed. She’s so squirmy about it, still. Just need to be consistent with it. It’s the only way.

Liz is singing and dancing in the bathroom right now while she does her teeth and nighttime routine. She always gets a surge of energy right before bed. I’m the opposite. I shut doooowwwnnn.

Oh man, I forgot about the earthquake yesterday. Big initial jolt and then tapered off pretty quickly. But the epicenter was over in South Pasadena, so there was so...

Day 3,940: Sweater Coops

Been warm in LA, but it finally looks like we have a stretch where its not so bad. High today was 91. That’s warm, no doubt. But it’s a lot better than 101. And by that I mostly mean that with 91, at least, it cools down in the evening. We had a very pleasant walk with the pups, and it wasn’t sweltering. So…yay.

Watched the Women’s Basketball Gold Medal game, finally, today. What a GAME. Wow. Crazy crazy game. I knew they won, so that wasn’t exactly spoiled, and I knew it was only by one poin...

Day 3,939: Built To Last

The Olympics are done. Gonna miss those, but excited for all the sports coming on its heels: rest of the WNBA season, Wrexham just kicked off their long season, Football preseason games have started, and basketball is about two months away. TONS of the sports.

Getting close on this book. Well past halfway, not quite to 2/3, but will hit that tomorrow. I wouldn’t call it the home stretch until I reach the last 25%, but we are CLOSE to that. So, the book is close. Feeling really, really good ab...

Day 3,938: Nil

An off day today. As in, I took it off from pretty much everything. Watched TV. Played Switch with Wolfie. Took a nap. Ate food. Walked the dogs. Hung out with Liz. Read.

A good day. I need a few of them, actually, lol. But one step at a time. I’m getting close to the home stretch with this novel. Need to keep pushing on that. Then, a break. Then, afterburners for the next book.

Right now: rest. Night night.

Day 3,937: Keeping Up

Hit an actual wall today with the writing streak. Only four pages today, and then I realized I needed to call it quits and chill. It was the right choice 🙂 I’ll be back at it tomorrow (or Sunday, we’ll see). The last 150 pages are ahead. It’s gotta be vibrant and exciting and real…and hard to do that—impossible, even—when you’re absolutely exhausted. So, a little rest is in order, and then we finish our climb up and down the mountain.

Good podcast with Josh. Great, even. We talked about rheto...

Day 3,936: Know Thyself

Another day, another ten pages biiiitches. Yeah!

It’s easy for me to forget that I’m writing a book faster than I ever have before. It’s disorienting. As it always is whenever I’m doing something I haven’t done before. That disorientation is exhausting. I’m fighting burnout right now. But, it’s something I want to get done. It’s something I can do. I want to learn from it.

I write pulp. It’s plot-driven. The characterizations are thin. The prose is light and easy to read. It’s candy.

Th...

Day 3,935: Rippin

Definitely struggling with the resistance at the moment, but what’s crazy is that I’m used to ten pages a day enough now that…I just do it. Even though the resistance part of me is freaking out and trying to put a halt on everything—for no other reason than just, I’m actually getting this novel done; which is to say, no sane reason—I sit down in my chair and crank out the requisite pages day in and day out. That basically a miracle. Really it’s not, nor is it a mystery: it’s hard work. Work I’ve...

Day 3,934: Patrol

My car has two new tires. The old ones turned out to be EIGHT YEARS OLD, which is wild…but I’ve only put like thirty or forty thousand miles on them in that time (hey hey, the benefits of working from home!) so the single flat didn’t mean it was necessary to change all of them. We changed two, so they could be rotated together and wear evenly. Also had them fix my dead sensors, so no more constant low pressure icon on the dash. Next up: an overdue oil change, and then Schnoops will be in perfect...

Day 3,933: Ambiguity

Ambiguity is when something has multiple meanings at the same time. It’s not either/or, its and/with.

Ambiguity is present in almost all great art. It’s deeply satisfying, and an acknowledgement of the real world we live in where so rarely we get a definitive yes or no answer on anything.

I got my pages done today. I’m feeling burnout. At least I did today. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll be back in the groove, but we’ll see. It’s the “easy push” I need. Less trudging through, and more just goin...