Love Me to the Bone
Draft 1
Words Added: 1,382
What Happened in the Story: Irene introduces Madeline to Nicholai, a designer whose spent his afterlife year making clothes for skeletons. Madeline hears a bit to suggest both Irene and Nicholai’s long-standing friendship, but also that Nicholai is only going to be in Requiem for four more days, and this seems to disturb Irene. Selecting a simple pattern to replace the ugly tweed dress she was buried in, Madeline then goes with Irene to find the Dead Letter Office.
Additional Notes: No update from yesterday, because it was a NO SCHOOL DAY, which means a NO WRITING DAY for me. I greatly admire those mothers out there (like Shirley Jackson!) who could write even when their kids were running around them, or like one writer I read about who used a baby-gate to fence herself off in the living room to write while the kiddos played and shrieked, but me? Yeah, no. I can’t manage it. While I can get into the zone despite the noise, inevitably I wind up getting interrupted by a simple request (snack, check that I wiped my butt okay, where’s my sweatshirt, look at me!), and if I’m in the zone, I get SO ANGRY by getting kicked out. I don’t like who I am when that happens, and I don’t like being mad at the boys when they’re simply being boys. So I’ve come to terms with the fact that I just don’t write at home when anyone’s around. (Even Andy has an unfortunate tendency to interrupt me with sweet videos to show me or to pace and rant about his day, and it ALSO makes me crazy: you see now why I go to the trouble of having an out-of-home office?)
But today, there are no such restrictions! We’re back into the regular routine and I got into the office (and deposited my four adorable new friends–the LEGO planters are from the boys for my birthday, and Atlas and Peabody are figurines we got Thing 1 years and years ago when he was obsessed with robots and Portal, but he’s since outgrown it a bit, but didn’t quite want to donate them, and since I’m still a huge Portal fan, they’ve come to live with me at the office. Aren’t they cute?!). I was a little worried that after the three-day weekend, the words wouldn’t come out right, but my fears were unfounded. If anything, I get into the zone faster when I’m handwriting than when I’m typing. How weird is that?
Thanks for following along, and I hope you enjoy the ride! I’ll try and make these daily updates (on writing days), but I’ll probably miss a few now and then. Sorry about that in advance, but I’ll do my best to be consistent. If you’re craving some personal stakes in this process, feel free to toss me a “You Can Do It!” donation at my Ko-fi shop! I’m going to need a lot of coffee for this…