My Mate Moses
The Quarantine Blog Day 9
Well day 9 has inevitably thinned productivity since it was a teaching day. I teach on an MA Creative Writing course and the day was spent looking at students' work in preparation for an evening workshop. I managed to snatch about half an hour to rip one or two shiny, dark words out of the coal seam, but obviously I couldn't get anywhere near the previous numbers.
Though I wouldn't have done any writing all today if it hadn't been for this blog. I feel driven to avoid offering you a Duck's Egg on this virtual scoreboard. There is something very satisfying about hitting the word-count button, something wonderfully anti-literary.
And at the moment the Quarantine target is not unreachable, since a few good days will balance up low scoring days like this.
The Quarantine idea was completely accidental since I'd decided 80,000 words was a solid first-draft target and 2,000 words a day was a stretch (for me, not for several writers) but realistic. But a friend offers the following interesting information about the Quarantine period: 'Why 40 days? Because the number 40 holds spiritual significance in the realm of transformation. Jesus wandered in the desert for 40 days in order to come to a greater understanding of himself and his mission. Moses and his people travelled through the desert for 40 years before arriving at their home in the holy land. Noah preserved the sacredness of life by sailing his ark for 40 days and 40 nights. According to the Kabbalah, it takes 40 days to ingrain any new way of being into our system.'
"Look at him, he's comparing himself with Jesus and Moses now".
But maybe not such an accident, then. The point is that for any writer this is a sensible time-lock, and one which the psyche already seems primed to understand. Go on. You know you want to.
A modest but respectable 689.
(For the previous Quarantine blogs click on "archives".)
