Bo-Bo Knows Mama Has No Business Making Wagers

After the first week of operation wacky writing wager (the use of the word wacky has more to do with my addiction to alliteration than anything wrong with the wager itself) I'd like to report that Stephen and I are locked in an epic horse race, but what we're actually in is more of a snail's race. We've both got a trail of slime stretching behind us that we've made an empty peace with calling our works in progress, and as you might imagine, neither snail is exactly hearing the Chariots-o-fire theme song as we race INCH toward what seemed like such a skimpy goal when we made this wager oh so casually in the comment section of this blog not so long ago. 

You can read about Stephen's dark night of the soul (aka his wicked writing woes--more ws!) here in which he whines that he's only got 7 pages finished. Only. Oh boo-flippin'-hoo, Stephen. Poor you.

You know how many pages I got if you only count the stuff that's pretty and perfect and ready to go?

Zero. As in none, nada, and if I knew how to spell it, bupkis.

But what I do have is a 20-page long hand page first draft of the first version of my revised (read that totally gutted and absolutely new) opening scene. It detours and tangents in the way my first drafts always do (I can't be the only writer whose first instinct is to take her characters from Boston to Cambridge by way of Timbuktu), but somewhere in the detours my imaginings have wrought, there's a faint heartbeat that tells me this might work. Keep chipping away at it. And please ignore the tantrum that your inner child is currently throwing about why oh why this convolutedly crazy craft style of yours (note the cs!) remains your process.


Because you have a wager on. And right now you're losing. Except in the one way you're winning: before the wager, you were stuck, and now you have a pile of prose poo (ps!) with a beating heart. Which means this wacky wager you've made has shaken you out of your revision paralysis and put you safely on the revising path.

So, no, Stephen. No fist pumps and booyahs here. But in my own way, I do think I'm winning. Even if I end up buying you a drink and toasting your superior output, I've won.