#108 : FALL 2024 DIARY / REALISTIC & SPECIAL WEEK IN MY LIFE

Walk with me. (Please—I'm so stressed out.)

Hey guys! Enjoyed this diary of an important week in my life.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17

I read about Liam Payne a lot. The news of his death broke yesterday (Wednesday). He jumped or fell while on drugs. A violent physical smashing and spiritual death of a lovely guy, who treated his own body like it was garbage, a glass bottle to be thrown off a building and shattered. And of course I am thinking about SAME, who was so handsome and funny, and so popular and loved, and who went off a high-rise the same way, wacked out of his mind on dissociative narcotics. Both deaths are great tragedies, and there's nothing anyone can do to make it better.

I spent all day cleaning up 150 pages for my Novel Generator class, which I submitted at 4 PM, because next week is my workshop day. The good news is, the pages were much better than I thought they’d be. I cut an entire chapter and squashed the only truly important scene from the chapter somewhere else. When I read through work that long, I’m paying the most attention to organization, transitions, and shape, not the writing.  My classmates and teacher, novelist and Princeton and Columbia professor Lynn Steger Strong, need a full week to read my 150 pages and another writer’s 150, which total 300 pages of reading a week. They will be workshopped next Wednesday night.

It was 6 PM and I hadn’t left the house yet. I’ve been easily fatigued and endurance cardio-wary since returning from Africa, but I went for a quick run down the Bowery and across the Manhattan Bridge into DUMBO.

I listened to "Best Song Ever" by One Direction, which was my alarm clock ringtone for years. The sky was incredible. I turned right around when I touched Brooklyn and jogged back.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18

I woke up feeling good because I’d ran. My best friend called from Connecticut while I was in the shower and I talked to her with the water still running. I sat down and wrote the second half of my Kit Rich column in Microsoft Word, and did laundry while I took photos in a pink outfit for the art. Then I did this 20 minute dance cardio workout, plus two rounds of this eight-minute dumbbell routine. I meant to publish the column, but I’m behind this week, because of my Novel Generator submission deadline.

While I was working, I got emails from my contractor Vishal, my lawyer Ross, my real estate agent Alicia,