So Thursday morning was luxuriously wide open and the plan was to write a blog post and read about 50 pages of the novel I’m working on. I read the first paragraph of the novel about ten times and then put the papers down. Okay, blog post. Nothing. I answered a few emails and then found myself staring at some website–not reading or thinking or even looking out the window. Just zonked.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I’d been working on my essay for this next packet–on narrative distance in beginnings–how to choose whether to begin with “It was a dark and stormy night” or “a woman”or “Ms. Last” or “Angelina Last” or “Angelina” or “she.” Now I had time to work on other things, but it seemed as if there was nothing left up there to work with.

So on Thursday morning when, out of the blue, a friend called to see if I wanted to go to a movie at 1:30, I knew that was exactly what I needed–to get out of this room and away from this screen. To get lost in another world. I couldn’t even remember the last movie I’d seen. The rest of the afternoon, I listened to music and read. It was as if I could see the needle moving past 1/4, past 1/2, and on its way to full.