I knew writing a book would take a huge effort but I never knew it could be so mentally exhausting. And not just in the predictable way of "hm, how should I go from here? Should I have this happen or this? How am I going to get from this point to the next point?" I expected that. But it's... creatively exhausting or something. See, it's so difficult I can't even come up with the right phrase. This should be obvious though since in previous posts: a) I essentially asked for help with the word "northeast" and b) I explained my much too long thought process for coming up with the word "monologue". If you only knew how much time I spent sitting at my laptop, head in my hands, trying to come up with a phrase or word that is on the tip of my tongue. And I don't try to use fancy vocabulary; simply trying to come up with words I haven't used 500 times already is hard enough.
And spelling. Don't even get me start on spelling. Before, I considered myself to be a rather good speller. I mean, not to brag, but I was the representative for my 6th grade class in the school wide spelling bee. In fact it was down to the final three and I realized, "oh crap, if I win this I am going to have to go to the county spelling bee and that's for dorks. I'm outta here" and I purposely misspelt the first excusable word and got out of there. People don't believe me when I tell this story, but I can describe my thought process in vivid detail, down to the reaction of the assistant principal when I spelled the word wrong. SO, that being said, I was a pretty good speller. Key word: WAS. I had no idea how reliant I am on spellcheck. This is calling myself out, but when I talk to people on gchat, sometimes I give up and have to use a different word because I cannot spell the word I want correctly and gchat doesn't let you use spell check (at least when you don't have a mouse). It's terrible! In the beginning I would try to challenge myself and keep trying to spell the word correctly until I got it but that became too time consuming so that plan was abandoned. But at least I tried right? But seriously, I am a terrible speller but I think it's more so because words are no longer words, just random combinations of sounds and letters since all I do is stare at a Word Document or this here blog post template.
I've started to forget the most obvious things and this is why Sporcle has become my nemesis. I sit there, begging my brain to give up the answer to who sings "All My Friends Say" because my college roommate was obsessed with that song, along with 60% of UGA's population, and I had seen the music video 37 times, and I bought my roommate the cd for her birthday yet I could not recall the guy's name. (Luke Bryan for those who were wondering) This is just one instance, it's happened dozens of times. I can name four associations I have with the word/ phrase/ person/ title I am trying to come up with except for the word itself. It happens all the time and it is so sad.
And I forget everything. You know when you think of something and you have to go into another room and once you get there you have no idea what it is you were about to do. Yeah, that happened about four times today alone. I use to be able to reverse my thought process to get to my original thought/ purpose but that's not as common these days. Sigh. I'm a mess.
Oh and typing. I took two typing classes in middle school and I've always been pretty fast since then. Well and my generation grew up on AIM when you had to type fast if you wanted to have those brief yet meaningful conversations with the cute boy in your class before he signed off. But since all I do is type, whether it is cover letters, job search engines, blog posts, or the book, it's actually amazing how bad I've gotten. You'd think I'd be a lot better but, no. I can't explain it, I don't know why. All I know is I am probably going to wear out my backspace key in the next few months.
But after admitting all of this, I hope it IS because of the book and not because I'm getting older. I'm only 22! Yikes!
But on a happy note, sometimes I surprise even myself with how I plot some storylines or just connecting overall events throughout the book. I think, "okay this can happen, and it will prompt that, and then the reader will remember that clue from that chapter and then it will all tie together" and ta-da... a connection! Unfortunately since I am so forgetful these days, sometimes I don't remember these small bursts of creativity and they are lost forever in the back of my murky mind. Mental note: I need to start writing stuff down. And I had to make my mental note an actual note... irony.
P.S. That's right, I quoted a Hanson song. This should speak volumes about my mental state.
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