To sleep, perchance to oversleep

Standard

10.5 hours! 10.5 hours! I actually slept for at least 10 hours last night, waking up to a muted sun at 10:30 this morning! I mean…Wow.

It’s been such a hectic, crazy week, and to get even 7 hours of sleep in a night was nearly impossible. But last night, I told B. to not wake me until noon at the latest, and sure enough, I sleepily opened my eyes, removed my eye mask, and was confronted with blinding mid-morning sunlight.

Ahhhh…total bliss.

Wrote 2611 words today. I only intended to write no more than 2000 — yesterday’s output drained me, cafe au lait notwithstanding. And today was an odd day — maybe it was the late start, but both B. and I had a difficult time energy-wise all day. And as I don’t handle stress very well, my shoulders have been killing me all week. The bad ergonomics at the various coffee shops where I do some of my writing don’t help either.

Anyhoo, that’s all for mah bitchin’ today.

I’m unsure about the quality of what I write, but then, I suppose that’s what NaNoWriMo is about, right? Or, more precisely, what it’s not about. (Insert grinning smiley face here.) I’m reading Tanamera by Noel Barber (one of 4 books I’m reading now, the other 3 unrelated to the novel, but I have to have something else so that I don’t feel that I’m consumed by this project. Which I am. I guess.), a novel set in Singapore during World War II. I suppose it’s dangerous to read something that’s similar to what one’s writing at the same time that you’re writing it, but it’s so rare to find anything written about Singapore, much less one that’s set in that time period, so it’s more like research to me than it is about spying on the competition. Anyway, it gives me a pretty good idea of the social mores, the language, the politics of that particular time and place, which comes in handy as my own book is very heavy on the socio-cultural atmosphere of Singapore, both just before and during the war itself.

The book is interesting partly because it starts out fairly slowly and is only now (page 122) getting interesting. I suppose that’s not too bad, considering it weighs in at 634 pages, but for a modern novel (i.e., one written in the last twenty-five years), I thought its rather plodding style would be the kiss of death. However, I noticed that it’s just been reprinted in the Hodder Great Reads series, so I guess it must be a classic. It does provide a very detailed, very intimate look at wartime Singaporean high society, which is critical to my own book, so for that I should be grateful.

Oh, and hey, great news. I had no problem getting into NaNoWriMo this evening. Been a breeze, as a matter of fact.

MRA