Monday, October 25, 2010

Random Thoughts' Monday: Return to Rambling

1 paper down, 1 more to go in 10 days. Not gonna focus on the next for the moment but just gonna bask in the glow (and crash and burn feeling!) of completing a paper that had me sweating bullets late last night. Imagine thinking your story is as polished as can be, and your beta reader/editor just hands you her crit and it turns out you have 5 pages of notes to 're-do' in the story. Hell, innit? That's how I felt last night when I completed my revisions and took a peek at the lecturers' feedback! Can you say panic and hyperventilating? I think even Jack Bauer and John MacClaine together couldn't have saved the day the way my future looked like right then!
Still, we writers are resilient ones, aren't we? Tackled the notes after a big breath (and a frappucino) and managed to see where my revisions and lecturers' notes didn't mesh perfectly. Went to sleep thinking/dreaming/talking in my sleep about meta ethical theories as individual conduct guidelines and normative ethics as the societal component (yes, that makes as much sense as Valium or Prozac).

Went through one of the worst traffic jams ever this morning. Left home at 7 am to get to the exam center at 8.15, tops. This takes 17 minutes during the day. Turns out we were still about a kilometre from the center at that precise time, thanks to morning commute to the capital city of Port Louis! Dashed into my classroom with exactly 3 minutes to spare before the paper started. And did I mention I just found out along this trip that there was no longer any coolant for the radiator and the car was dangerously heating?

All in all, the questions turned out to be do-able, and I managed to turn my answer book in with 5 minutes to go to deadline. Covered 12 A4 pages (that's 3000 words, innit?) with answers, written in longhand! Turns out I still recall how to write, but now my wrist is killing me and the crash and burn means my arms, legs, and back feel like jelly. :)

And did I mention my brain took this exact moment to slam-dunk me not just one, but two, story ideas? One is a totally novel story idea that is screaming to be heard/written/be done with. The other is a 'revelation' about my heroine N in the WIP, and something terribly pertinent and vital about her relationship with the men in her love life.

Oh, and another thing - silence is over-rated! When I was younger, my parents always complained of me studying with music blaring out of the radio cassette player (yeah, that old!). Between Rob Zombie 'puking his guts out' as my Mom so graciously spelt it, and Boyzone and Backstreet Boys singing about eternal love, and Britney asking to be 'hit one more time', it seemed, even to me, as a miracle that I ended up my school years with good-enough grades.
Now, it turns out there is a correlation between studying and music in the background. I did that this Saturday when studying and it seemed a block suddenly lifted as music played. I dunno - it could be that listening to music engages a different part of your brain and this helps to concentrate with the part that is assimilating the study. Strange but it works - I'm gonna study with music now!

So I go back to the regular madness now. The past weeks have been a rollercoaster of getting things done and now all I wanna do is sink into my comfy bed with a thick quilt and lose myself in a book. The dilemma - which book to choose?

From Mauritius with love (and totally wiped out!),

Zee

4 comments:

Sandy said...

Glad you got it done and that music helps. lol You know me, absolute quiet is what I have to have.

Zee Monodee said...

Lol Sandy. I thought absolute quiet worked for me too until this happened. :)

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for this review and for your blog on the whole. I’ve just subscribed to your news feed.

Zee Monodee said...

Anon,

Thanks for your comment and subscribing. Would love to know who you are, :), but thanks anyhow.