So I decided to celebrate my National Novel Writing Month win with a nap. And that’s when I realized … my life now has a voiceover. In my head. Me, giving a running commentary of what I’m doing.
As in:
She pondered how to spend the rest of the afternoon. Should she go running early? Today was a running day and she feared she may want to put it off if she waited until later. Or should she finish the rest of her book? She’d been trying to read, but writing about her own characters had relegated her book-reading times to bubble baths (and she’d had quite a few of those of late, as a needed escape from noveling. It’s not always the smartest thing to take one’s laptop to the bathtub, so she hadn’t done that this month.) She walked past her husband, in full-on nap mode, sleeping soundly and snoring softly in the afternoon light that bathed their bedroom. So instead of running or writing, she slipped in beside her true love, feeling the cool covers surround her as she felt the first waves of sleep come on. She wondered briefly if she’d feel she’d wasted her afternoon away, but she decided it didn’t matter: She was a novelist. She was accomplished.
Now, part of me is really thrilled about this new voiceover I have picked up. Yay material for future novels! (And current ones, which will definitely need some editing and scene-filling.) But part of me feels a little bit like Will Farrell in “Stranger Than Fiction.” I can control this voice – as it’s me speaking and I make the plot decisions, but it’s hard to quiet myself if I’m trying to nap … I’m torn between sleeping and running to grab a paper and pen and jot down notes.
She briefly thought of giving up her nap for the sake of her art, as there was nothing worse than waking up remembering that she had thought of something brilliant, but forgetting what it was. But today, her 50,000 word day, she decided it was going to be all right, just this once, to put herself first. Put her nap over her writing, put her husband over her keyboard, put herself over her characters.
She closed her eyes and smiled, and sleep finally came.
