Before School

Suddenly, the summer is all but gone, and it’s making me anxious. On the 23rd, I have an all-day New Employee orientation at UConn, and the following Tuesday, I teach my first class -- i.e., the holiday is over. Suddenly, the syllabus needs to be tweaked. Suddenly, I have no decent clothes to wear to work. Suddenly, where did the summer go?

I have this idiotic idea – I realize – that everything needs to be finished before school starts. The car needs to washed and vacuumed, and the break light needs to be fixed. The first draft of the novel needs to be completed (no chance!). Various papers filed. Old magazines sorted through and recycled. Etc. Etc. I love arbitrary deadlines. Actually, no, I don’t love them, but I torture myself with them. Deep inside, I know that the deadline means nothing and that I’ll probably be more efficient once work starts. I’m not that good with a lot of unstructured time.

Still, I’m trying to do as much as I can. For example, last week I finally went to pick blueberries. And peaches. There are tons of farms around here that grow fruit and vegetables and let you pick your own.

Also, last week we finally met up with the person who knows how to set up a voice-recording studio (for Movie Dictator), and as a result, I’ve ordered lots of various equipment that he will then help us set up.

Then, of course, there’s writing… which is hard. I mean, novels are hard. I’m knee-deep in my novel, and it feels like I’m knee-deep in a swamp. I hope it’s normal. I hope it’s not that different from writing a short story – when I’m slogging through a first draft and it’s awful. It’s an ugly, unreadable mess, spiraling out of control. Then, one day, as if by magic it all comes together in my head, and there’s suddenly clarity, and I know that this will be a story. So I’m hoping it’s like that with novels, except it takes much longer to get to that point of clarity.

In the meantime, I’m reading lots of Russian books. (I ordered a whole stack of them recently, and since my novel is set in Russia, reading and thinking in Russian is helpful.) And I’m still hoping to go hiking one of these days – maybe even tomorrow! This area is full of forests and hiking trails. And we probably need to take a trip to New Hampshire sometime this weekend – as Movie Dictator is almost out of Marlboros. And finally, sometime next week I need to gather up my courage and go clothes shopping – which is somehow more scary than getting lost in a forest.