Initial post: 7:45 pm
I’ve blocked out 8pm to 2am, local time, as my official NaDruWriNi period of observance. (If you’re asking yourself what this NaDruWriNi thing is, scroll down one post & follow the link.) The plan is fairly straightforward: I drink, I write, I occasionally get up to change loads in the laundry machines. I’ll be refreshing this post on a roughly hourly basis with details about what I’ve been drinking and what I’ve been writing, although not what I’ve been laundering I’m afraid.
What am I writing about? I’ll start by mixing a metaphor by putting the last nail into the albatross which is this paper I’ve been intermittently complaining about; once that’s done, then we’ll see where the Muse takes me.
At the moment I’ve got a pint-glass in front of me full of Hornsby’s Hard Cider — Amber Draft, an apple cider brought to us by E&J Gallo, purveyors of fine California plonk for who knows how long. This is by way of being a warm-up to the main event; the serious drunken writing will require sterner stuff, of which I have an ample supply.
Aut vincere aut mori!
Update: 8:56 pm
The cider was kind of disappointing; I like a certain crispness in my hard ciders, which this one almost entirely lacked. Currently I’m most of the way through a bottle of a Pale Ale by a local brewpub that got a licence to go retail; interestingly, I don’t like this particular brew on tap, but the bottle-aging seems to help it along nicely.
As far as writing goes, I’m still working on the Dreaded Paper; there’s one main argument that I want to get written up, and I think I finally see clearly how it’s supposed to go. Now, I’ve known more or less how it’s supposed to work for a few weeks now, ever since I got the proper definitions in place, but (as many of my readers are aware) math isn’t usually a “more or less” kind of thing… despite what you might see in any number of research papers.
I don’t usually do this much involving fine motor skills (i.e. typing) when I’m drinking. This experience so far is leading me to believe that when I do drink, I’m often slightly drunker than I think I am.
Update: 9:57 pm
Took a break for a while to have some dinner, having realised how little I’d eaten today compared with how much I was drinking. Then I got stuck on a couple of details in a proof, asked someone who had a better chance than I did of knowing how to clear them up, and ended up chatting over messenger for a while. I’m a bad bad NaDruWriter.
After I finished the ale, I figured it was time to move up in the world of alcohol percentage, so I pulled out the Sheridan’s. It saddens me that you can’t apparently buy Sheridan’s in my city; this particular bottle was one I bought in Ontario some months ago. Unfortunately, the cream side of the bottle doesn’t actually pour half as fast as the dark half, which means I always run out of the cream liqueur first. I finished that drink a couple of minutes ago, and currently has a Kahlua especial and milk waiting for me to finish drinking a couple of glasses of water.
(What’s so special about it? About twice as much alcohol as the ordinary stuff, apparently. Y is for yowza.)
At some point soon I’m going to get bored with typing up math, and then I’ll turn my attention to something more entertaining. Hopefully I’ll finish this proof before then.
Update: 11:00 pm
So far I’m quite disappointed in myself on both counts. I haven’t had a drop to drink since I finished my Kahlua&milk forty-five minutes ago, and I’ve barel;y written a word on the aforementioned proof.
Part of the point of this whole NaDruWriNi thing is to babble: let down the defenses, give the little editor in one’s head the night off, and just go. And it’s possible that I’m just not a natural babbled. Oh, I know that I’m capable of writing long, rambling e-mails — as some of my readers could attest — but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. And it’s not really babbling if you’re agonizing over turns of phrase and word choices, now is it?
Since much of the art of proof writing for a research journal involves just such agony, I’m leaving that be for now; I’ve hand-written some notes about how to finish the proof, which hopefully will make sense tomorrow. I’m turning my attention for the moment to another writing project; we’ll see if that goes any better. I’ve got a G&T lined up to continue the drinking, with little chunks of lemon zest floating in it for a bit of extra flavour; someday, I’ll have to get someone to teach me how to do a proper twist.
Update: 3:28 am
Well that didn’t go according to plan.
I’d gotten about three-quarters of the way through my gin & tonic (or, to be more precise, my GIN & tonic: I have no shotglasses, and so mix by eye. Sometimes this works better than other times) when I get messaged. This turns into a nearly two-hour phone conversation… and when I get done with that one, I end up getting involved in another twoish-hour phone conversation.
(This is not because I’m going through any particular crisis myself, I hasten to assure any of you who might be concerned. Nor, oddly, do I mind getting phone calls past midnight… at least, as long as it’s not too long past midnight. Seven hours past midnight, for instance, is utterly unacceptable. But I digress.)
So I’ve been sipping a not-half-bad ruby port through much of the last phone conversation, but my buzz is essentially gone now. And there’s a huge f**king storm going on outside, and the power’s been flickering, so I’m going to go drink some water & then head to bed.
Final score for writing: not as much as I’d liked. Maybe I’ll try this again next weekend.