On Slumps and Sequences - TWIW - 5/26/25 - 6/8/25
We poured our time into the Pouring of Time
Output - Data
Total: 9,440 words (20 pages [1,224] + 5,360 typed)
Days of Writing: 9/14 days (.643 WrPCT)
AWD: 1,049/day
Words Added to Avalanche: 2,182
Ratio: 23
Longest Day: 6/4/25 - (3 pages [612] + 1,776 typed [for America!])
The Still Bleepin’ Counts Award: [Tie] 5/28 & 5/30/25 - 204 words (1 page)
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Output - Synthesis
I was goin’ pretty good until it just… stopped. This was due in part to several factors, chief among them being inconsistent writing time (which I don’t begrudge). And, when I did sit down to write, it was like I’d step up to the plate and find myself caught in between on pitches I’d usually crush.
To break out of this slump, I held steadfast to the process and took it one word at a time until it all made sense. I made like a ballplayer in a ballplayer going through a down week by continuing to grind and tinker and practice and listen foremost—swing after swing after swing, word after word after word—until I started to feel more on track, like I was seeing the fastball of inspiration again (this is cheesier than five cheese Ziti, but I’m keeping it).
To mix this metaphor and switch from batting to pitching like Ohnly one Unicorn can do, I took it one pitch at a time—not thinking about the last one or any of the future ones, only the one before me. Only this word. Only this moment.
There’s really the only way out of a slump: fuckin’ through. Thankfully, all the words will ever ask of us is that we try and try and try, so eventually we do in fact unslump ourselves by sheer force of will, by putting one word in front of the other until syntax and sentence, until story and structure are formed—as they inevitably always are.
The Pouring of Time has been kicking my ass, too, so there’s definitely been that component of it. I’ve had to go through the city council meeting where Levi and Maribel try to advocate for the forest three rootin’ tootin’ times because it Just. Didn’t. Feel. Right. I was thinking about all the expository ground I had to cover, like introducing a new location and welcoming two new characters to the fold and where everyone was sitting at the table and who even’s at the table, and came to realize that none of it was really needed. Avalanche is a mountain slide of small details, and everything new in this scene will already be introduced as history in the other storylines. Both of the new fellas, Shribley1 and Anson2, have an impact on the other two storylines, and this is sorta the pay off where we finally get to meet the two of them.
I hate being conceptual rather than actionable, though, so I used the constraints of a cold open to offer up the most crucial details to make these people immediately recognizable—archetypal, without being cliché (I hope). Being abrupt about it, too, keeps things a wee bit more lithe. I don’t want to slow down all the momentum of the book just for the sake of Coleman’s Office and two minor characters.
From here, we continue on with the sequence. I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the journal that needs to be typed out and synthesized, but I’m sure that will come with time.
Input - Synthesis
I’m enjoying Omensetter’s Luck. I dug into some mystic poetry, but didn’t cover enough ground for any sort of synthesis.
Input - Data
Book: Omensetter’s Luck by William H. Macy—err, Gass.
Starting Page: 27
Ending Page: 90
Days Read: 5
Pages Read: 63
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Other: The Upanishads and Kabbalah Poetry
Combined Pages Read: 27
Days Read: 2
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5/14 days (.357 rPCT)
Combined Pages Read: 90
Combined Pages Per Day: 18
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⥁⥀⥁ Update Archives
⥁⥀⥁ Fiction
⥁⥀⥁ Appendices
⥁⥀⥁Non-Fiction
Shribley Scruggs, Sr. is a is a hapless, forgetful, and rotund man in his early 30’s who drinks buttermilk with every meal. He’s six feet tall and looks like William Howard Taft, like, he’s just this big fella who sits around drinking milk all day—who brings the smell of the pastures on both his clothing and his breath.
But he’s got money. He, too, caught wind of the opportunities here—and how land for a dairy farm could be bought cheap. He moved his wife and daughter from Wisconsin where nobody really liked him and his father was an asshole to a new place with new people, hoping that they would see the good in the ever-befuddled but well-meaning Scruggs.
His wife does most of the work, along with a rotating team of hands whose names escape him, though he is most adept at the numbers. He started in with the city council mostly so that he would get out of the house. Otherwise he would lay around, forgetting a thousand things while lost in a condensed novel.
Mr. Anson Benjamin is a man of hearty thickness in his 40’s with stern brown eyes and blonde hair put in a sharp part across his slowly growing forehead. He has a long amber mustache that grows down the sides of his goatee in a loose curl. He’s known as a redass, like his wife. She is also the one person who holds any power over him.
Anson’s a Tennesee man whose father-in-law sent him west to profit off the boom he caught word of, that there was copper and maybe more. When he arrived, it was clear that there was no infrastructure to take on with. He wrote as much to Abigail’s father, hoping it would allow him to come home and continue on with the business and life he’d been forced to abandon. But his father said to press on—he latched onto the word of timber operations and said, “Cut, cut, cut m’boy.”
Sounds like a couple of interesting characters being included.