Desperation Days -- Phish 2011

The desperation days were upon me. It was June. Soon it would be time to leave. I still had lots of pages to write so I could get to the last sentence of the book. The goal was to keep the wordflow going--write a good book and get to the end and then celebrate with a road trip. I had to finish the draft before I left.

I was used to writing all day and all night. The writing days had been good. I just kept on moving forward. One of the biggest challenges to the modern writer is little thing called writer's distraction. There's a lot going on. You have to focus.

And what do you do when Phish comes to town? I knew I had to see them play, but I also knew I had to write. Phish was playing two shows. On Saturday, I wrote during the day and went to the show at night. On Sunday, my day was occupied. My plan was to skip the show and write at night. Then I got the idea: why not do both. I would go to the show, bring my notes, and sit there and write with pen and paper. Phish would play and I would write.

This writing mission actually worked better than I ever thought. The show was about three hours and I wrote about ten pages. I sat near the back, near the trunk of a great tree. I wore ear plugs and I sat on the ground. A lady named Carol came over to talk with me a little bit, but for most of the show no one said anything to me. I just sat there and wrote. Phish was working. I was working. It really felt good.

Later on, these two guys stopped by and I got one of them to take a photo of me. I needed to document the desperation writing (see photo below).

The title, desperation days, is just what happens when you get deep into a book. Every moment becomes this precious thing, and you work all day and night, as much as you can, just moving toward the goal. The desire to write is so great that it's incredible. But you still want to live your life and have fun--maybe go to a concert or two. The mind makes things possible. I'm glad I got the idea to do both. Desperation days call for creative thinking.

The thing with desperation days is that you know they are happening. I even told Carol that I was in my desperation days. I said, "I absolutely have to finish this book before I go on the road." She seemed to understand. She was sitting maybe thirty feet in front of me. She liked to look back every so often. I just kept writing. It's the only way.