The In-Between

There's a feeling I experience when I get around to working on my book that takes me out of reality. My fingers slam across my keyboard at a rate I think is way too fast for the task at hand, but still I reach a point that I am loathe to call "on a roll."

I think about the feeling, dare to revel in it even, finally reaching again that level of confidence that allows me to say, "I can really do this." Then I save the document for the last time before closing it out.

And then I think. I think about what I have just written and how it kind of ran not according to plan -- the little planning that I had done. I think about what comes next. Invariably, the roll ends and the doubt overcomes me. What happens next? What of my life after my questionable decision to attempt growing a head full of dreadlocks is interesting? Cue the end of the roll.

I've been mired in this process in one way or another since I was twelve, getting serious finally a few years ago. After moving to New York, I put pen to notebook paper and wrote on the subway in near-illegible script that I'd struggle to transcribe at a later date. I started in the present and flashed back. It bored me. I started from the beginning, but my memories failed me. How to insert a poignant moment when I was two that says a lot about race but that my aunt merely told me about it ten years ago? That's the question that rankles me at just about every turn I take through this story.

And then I remind myself to save it for draft No. 2. It takes a lot of pressure off until I feel that roll come on again. Now I remind myself not to wait for the roll but to hop on and type at 85 words a minute until I have 1,000 words, at least, a day. At 245 pages of first-draft nonsense, I've got a lot left to muddle through. The biggest task, however, will be to silence the censor and get on with it already.