Course Correction

Blogging every day: check
Yoga every day: check
Vegan every day: check
Writing a novel: not so much

Maybe my original plan was a bit on the ambitious side. When I wrote the novel four years ago, I was doing a rather cushy neurology rotation, with my weekends off, no call, and I took the week after Thanksgiving off, so I had eleven days off to work on the novel. This included an all-you-can-write retreat in my sister's cabin in Northern Michigan, where I did nothing but write for three days straight. That was awesome. I was so caught up in the story, and my characters were so real to me. I'd been a resident for almost five months, and I had met so many fascinating people and had so many intense interpersonal interactions, and I was taking all that energy and channeling it into the novel. It's called "By the Time We Got to Woodstock" and is about two teenage girls on their way to Woodstock, and their adventures along the way. It's a coming-of-age story, and I feel like I was going through a coming-of-age period in my life when I wrote it. And I have such affection for the characters who came to life in the story: Olivia, Rachel, Josh, Paul, Brett, and the French girl whose name I've forgotten (sorry, Claire! or was it Chloe?).

So I've decided to course correct, and instead of writing a novel in November, I'll edit a novel in November. There are a couple of unfinished chapters that need a fair amount of work, including the one where everyone drops acid around a bonfire. I think I glossed over that chapter because, having never dropped acid, I didn't know what to write about it. I just saw a movie this weekend where everyone takes acid and suddenly they're all laughing and hungry, which seemed very pot-esque to me. I always thought of acid as more just getting lost in your own trip, and didn't associate it with the giggles or getting the munchies. Can anyone enlighten me? I'm talking to you, Animal. What gives with the LSD, man?

Anyway, the mission to write another novel this month is officially aborted, and the mission to get my novel one step closer to an actual manuscript has begun. In the meantime, the blog posts, the Trader Joe's soy ice cream bars (heavenly!), and the upward facing dogs will keep on comin'!