Tip: avoid bedroom writing

No, I'm not going to talk about how having sex and writing at the same time doesn't work, I haven't tried that yet! Let me just say I do NOT recommend writing on a laptop on your bed on a hot day in the middle of the afternoon. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I'm a sleepy person as it is. I wasn't too excited with today's scene, the party, and I guess I got really bored with it. Plus it was freakin' hot. (speaking of rooms and writing, here's a good but somewhat depressing article on the subject)

I had good intentions: unhook from the internet, get out of the living room where TV rules (although I had it off...it still calls to me) and just try to get into the zone. I was pushing it away today I think, I definitely have better stuff in the draft but today was not my day. I still cranked out the damn words (as it's been said it's easy to write badly, good writing's the hard part).

I did get writing done today, 2,271 words to be exact about it. Bringing my total count to about 36,000 words. Here is some of my flowery prose (insert sarcastic tone here); there are already a lot of "wasted" words - but I need to just get through it, and I realize this. Anyway, on to the excerpt:

“You’re obviously not into going back out there,” Jamie said.
“I don’t
know any of them,” he replied.
“Neither do I!” she protested. “Except for
Carol.”
“Yeah, me too. God, Jamie, is it just me or does this dialogue
suck?”
Kevin looked at his watch. “Well, we got two more hours of this, at
least.” He glanced unenthusiastically towards the living room where a rash of
laughter had erupted.
“Let’s play a game!” they heard Carol scream, and Jamie
winced. She looked over at Kevin, who was doing the same. Tony was just now
coming inside, and smiled devilishly at both of them.
“What’s goin’ on,
kids?” Tony said.
Jamie began to feel like she was at a high school
party.

I warned you! Here's some more genius writing:

“Then there’s Shawn,” Carol was going on, although when she said Shawn’s name
her voice changed somehow. Jamie guessed it was Carol’s new friend, but she was
wrong. “Shawn is Clancy’s brother; I really don’t know why he’s here, but what
the hell? Jeff said he’s home from school now, living at home just like me. so
who gives a rat’s ass?”
“Carol, people don’t say rat’s ass anymore,” I told
them. But they weren’t listening. Carol hadn’t wanted to say rat’s ass anyway.
She was too concerned about her new boyfriend.
“Clancy is my
boyfriend,” Abbey interjected loudly, piercing Jamie’s ear with the high
pitch.
“Okay,” she replied, laughing and trying to make Abbey think she
couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

(No, there are no first person characters in my story!) I know, I know, these little excerpts are silly. But, I do get joy out of blogging them. Maybe that's the only reason I'm writing them (but no, I was doing them before this. My characters get annoyed with me sometimes). Maybe I'm just reminding myself that not every word (a whole page, even) has to be perfect the first draft. This is my chance to be crappy and not care about my style. Which is good, seeing as how a couple years ago I decided I 'didn't want to be writer' and haven't written much since...

Things are going very slow in my novel right now, even though I know the direction I'm going (mostly). I think it's because I'm writing the part before the big part, the part where *major* changes will happen - the asteroid hits, basically, LOL, in Jamie's world...I think I'll be cutting a lot of the first half of the draft; but I'll never know until I'm finished and am in the rewrite phase! I'm looking forward to that. It's actually my favorite part; it's like taking a lump of clay and making it into something beautiful, something with a form. Is it so bad to start out as a lump of clay?