Monday Moanings - April 8, 2013

My book – a memoir about the journey with my mother through Alzheimer’s – needs work. Actually it needs words, some serious bum in chair, pencil in hand time. Some 15,000 words are already done as part of my effort to produce a full manuscript by the end of December, but I’ve got to get another 12K down by April 24th.
Well that’s less than a thousand words a day – no problem! But here’s what happens:

Saturday dawned with great intentions and to be fair I did spend a couple of hours mapping out the story so far; the pieces already written and those yet to be written were laid out chronologically.  Indeed a worthy pursuit, but no actual writing was done.

Sunday arrived. It too was filled with writing plans and good intentions, but I fretted away the morning – that timeline thingy I produced Saturday sucked me into a web of ‘shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘oh my god, what have I forgottens’! It was the perfect sinkhole for a recovering perfectionist. I then spent the afternoon reading through the email diary (all the emails exchanged among my sisters and others) of the journey, almost a book in itself. Again a good piece of research, and I did find a few gems I’d forgotten about, but still no writing.

Monday brings new resolve: Hello my name is April and I am a perfectionist. It has been eighteen hours since my last relapse. And today I am writing – first this blog and then on to a section of the memoir I mapped out last night when sleep eluded me.

I gotta get going folks. My brain is already well into the memoir section while my fingers scribble hard and fast to finish these words. Meet me back here Thursday and I’ll give you an update.
Ciao!

Addendum: I really would be remiss if I didn’t offer some comment on the passing of Dame Margaret Thatcher. If you have not seen the movie, “The Iron Lady” with Meryl Streep in the leading role, do search it out; a great portrayal of a truly remarkable woman. The heavenly host is rumbling today, ‘Brace yourselves, Maggie has come home!’