I write a little myself, as well...

A woman, one of the Workers, asked me on Monday if I had witnessed the Super Bowl sporting contest the previous evening. I said no, that I was writing poetry in my journal at the time.

I was kidding with her, giving her an answer that contained what I imagined might seem like the opposite of watching the Big Game. She laughed, like she was supposed to, but then kept on laughing at the very idea of me writing verse into a notebook.

This is something I actually do. But to her it seemed as likely as if I had told her I had played in the Super Bowl the previous evening. She does not believe I have the depth necessary to want to write things down.

I walked off a little offended. Sure, the personality I display among the Workers is a bit less than poetic, but the idea that me sitting down to write something would strike someone as inherently comical stuck with me.

Ultimately, I decided she was probably not wrong in reaching her conclusion. She does not know me well, and Worker Maht is a bit of a strain. I am not particularly eloquent in general when my words fly out into the air. I cannot massage them as I can on a page. Add in my ADD, stress and various other factors and I can see how it might be a little unlikely that the loud, weird guy might spend his nights agonizing over the phrasing of a sentence.

I think some of the people there think I spend my nights coming up with clever things I might say to them.

And then, it sort of happened again with my written words yesterday. I sent a brief excerpt of my current novel to a friend, and he replied that it didn't really read as though I had written it. I think he expected the somewhat breezy style I maintain on my blog, which is also what he has encountered reading bits of my NaNo piece. He expressed surprise that it contained so much imagery.

This sort of style (the blog one) is pretty easy for me to write, and I don't think it is a bad way of expressing myself, but it is not really what I have in mind when it comes to crafting this story. I used that style to get through NaNo, sure, but I never had any intention of publishing that book, and the characters and situations lent themselves to a more casual approach. I guess I don't think of it as "my style." It's just a style. My current novel requires another.

I use it here on my blog because it is the closest I can come to my side of a conversation on a page. And I deliberately do not edit or tweak the words much, letting them instead just pour out as they might if I were speaking to you. I tell myself that this makes me seem more communicative.

I've finally started making headway on my novel again. This one is coming so painfully slow that I keep thinking that I cannot tell this story. And then, when I am just about to quit for a while and go write my other novel, a small facet will sort of make itself evident and I can write that part. In this fashion I got about 4,000 words this week. This feels great, especially as I cut 3,000 last week but never updated the word count meter in the sidebar. I couldn't bear the thought of advertising to you that I was going backward. But now that I'm a whole one percent closer to a completed first draft, I feel like dancing.

Well, OK, maybe not dancing. As likely activities go, dancing falls somewhere below writing poetry in my notebook. And somewhere above watching the Super Bowl.