I just yelled at VJ on the phone. She is now interested in sending Zanaya to a therapeutic school, while I’m putting my foot down about sending her anywhere else. This is fucked. Every year or so we change the kid’s school, and now she is tired of being moved around. The kid refuses to go to school, refuses to do any work, and Valerie’s response is to send her to another institution. I swore at VJ, and when she told me that was unacceptable I told her that divorcing me was unacceptable. Then I called her a selfish, selfish bitch. I’m telling you, divorce sucks the big one.

Let me move on so I can reduce my blood pressure a bit.

I was looking back at some of my posts yesterday, and I was a bit surprised to find that less than a month ago I wrote that the freewriting wasn’t helping me all that much. This is surprising since my more recent posts have pointed out the benefits I am reaping from writing this blog. I have found that my writing flows better, and it is easier to hit my word count goals. Even just a few weeks ago I was struggling to put down 300 words. Now I’m easily hitting the 500 word mark without worrying about it. Also, I have lost some of my anxiety around the need to continue writing without a break. If I have to take a break in the middle of a post, no big deal. The post still gets written in what seems to be a short amount of time.

And again, because this is a freewriting blog, I am not editing anything I write. I may fix a few typos here and there, but these posts are purposefully unedited. Editing is taught as writing in most writing classes. Or, rather, editing is taught in the place of writing. Freewriting is an important part of the process that usually gets only a bit of lip service. What I have found is that the freewritten stuff, while in need of editing, is the best stuff I write - it flows better and causes me less agida than the more usual practice of writing one crafted sentence at a time. Freewriting postpones the editing process and allows me to focus on narrative.

All this to say that this blog has really helped. I am writing more often, and writing more when I do write. That being the case, I really should keep doing this freewriting blog for as long as I can. At this point I have only been doing it for a month and a half. Let’s see if I can do it for a year. I would imagine, given my history, that this blog practice will fall away, but I need to keep going for as long as I can maintain it. Doing at least a year of this kind of daily writing would be a great big boost to my writing in general.