one more draft…

first, i hope everyone had even half as enjoyable and relaxing a holiday break as i did.

second, i almost made it this weekend.

saturday was a surprisingly good day for typing up the book, which was good, because friday was a surprisingly bad one. not terrible, but i just wasn’t there on friday. i managed a few pages, but then i found myself out in the garage hanging a string and weight to mark how far i can drive my car in when it touches the windshield, or walking the dog uphill in the cold rain (which was actually a great time), or heating up thanksgiving leftovers for lunch (and pie!), or hanging a new hook on the back of my wife’s closet door, or re-reading D M Cornish’s Foundling.

in short, not typing.

but, s’okay. that’s what that day was for, and it ended with a great evening at my parents for dinner with my brother and his family, which was an unexpected surprise.

saturday, as i said, was something else altogether. barring a brief hello to my wife at lunch and then a couple hours for dinner and Steve Carrell’s Get Smart (which was still very smart-ly funny [mostly] the second time), i was at the computer all day, Pandora in the background, going gangbusters. i typed up 31 pages before i called it a night, and i was having a blast.

that last bit is the most impressive thing, for me, at this point. the fact that i’m enjoying my own writing and the story feels smooth (for the most part) is something of a constant high. it’s by no means perfect, and i have two pages (and growing) of notes tagged on to the bottom of the document as i run across things i need to address in the full revision, but by and large, i’m very excited.

with this morning’s additional 7 pages, i have passed the section i thought was going to need the most work. while i will be addressing several things, it doesn’t feel nearly as ineffective or weak as i had thought when i finally finished it. this is even more interesting, because, as my wife pointed out, i have a much better sense of pacing with this typing process, as i’m moving steadily through it, so such obstacles would likely be more obvious, not less.

and now i’m at the last chapter. that said, the last chapter is 41 pages long. i think i’ve mentioned this before, my problem with accurately estimating chapter sizes in my outline. it’s a little disheartening to see this stack of papers still there, but it’s only a quarter inch thick, now, instead of two and a half. this is a good thing.

interesting note (to me, anyway): the ‘official’ word count seems to be homing in on the estimated word count with rather surprising accuracy.

but, of course, there’s the unavoidable fact that once i reach the ‘end’, i still won’t have finished the typing. there’s a bajillion (technical term) spelling mistakes to be fixed; the payment for speed. that will be tedious and a little time-consuming, but then it will really be ‘done’, as far as being typed up.

so, i’m looking at sometime this week, probably thursday, maybe friday. then again, we know how effective my deadlines have been…

in other news, it’s snowing here, and i am very happy. i live in maine for several reasons, and this is one of the biggest. it’s just a bit of a crystalline dusting, tonight, but it was great to feel it on my skin again and hear it hiss along the bare tree branches and down into the cold-prickled grass.

we live in a wondrous world, full of amazing things.

now it’s time for bed.

another couple hours this morning gave me 6 pages (plus a little revision), which is great. even better, the rest of the day is open to me, as there are no classes today, because of Thanksgiving, tomorrow. so there’s the potential for significantly more progress.

but should i?

i’m calling it now for lunch, and for a couple hours of makeup work for my computer job (following yesterday’s power outage). i’m still up in the air whether i’ll put in a full afternoon there, or finish the bug i was working on and then go back to writing.

on one hand, more money; on the other, more book progress.

but there’s one more factor: my wife is home, today, too. of course, she’s more than capable of entertaining herself. right now, as a matter of fact, she’s baking a delicious smelling lemon pie from a new recipe, and this follows a morning spent reading.

so what’s my point?

well, i tend to take an overly long view of things. i see the whole of the work with the book as needing to be finished as soon as possible, in hopes of getting an agent and contract sooner, which would, presumably, yield a bonus to our financial income which would, in turn, allow me to slow down a little and enjoy more of the daily things i keep saying i’ll do after i finish the book, like more walks with the dog, more projects around the house, and more time with my wife doing, well, whatever.

but i’m pretty sure that’s what i said after Witness, and here i am teaching part-time, computer work part-time, and writing part-time. of course, we have financial requirements, as everyone does, so the jobs are critical. does this mean the book isn’t? no, but i guess i’m trying to get to a place, mentally, that allows me to not work on the book obsessively. writing is still my goal, but if i spend an afternoon curled up with a new book* next to my wife, sipping tea, throw in a walk with the dog, and who knows what else, or nothing else at all, can i not think of it as time-not-making-progress-on-my-book?

one way to find out.

have a lovely holiday, all.

* i was just given the second book in D M Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo series, Lamplighter, which i am thrilled to get into, but now i have to re-read Foundling, first. i highly recommend Foundling, and have great hopes for Lamplighter, too. not only are the writing and the incredibly rich world delightful, but i love Mr. Cornish’s artwork, all self-done.

and by ‘delightful’ and ‘love’, i obviously mean ‘incredibly, painfully jealous of’. take a look for yourself. i wish i’d had these books when i was younger.

so we lost power late yesterday afternoon, which isn’t entirely unusual in rain and wind storms like we were having. it was blowing pretty strong. days that make one thankful for a roof and heat. which we had, thanks to the woodstove. i love woodstoves. i’m sure pellet stoves are extremely efficient and all that, but i do enjoy the hands on element of a woodstove.

anyway, why am i talking about woodstoves? oh, the power outage. so it being december up here in the northern climes, late afternoon is another word for night, so after watching the computers and lights sputter and gasp for life a few times, in vain, it was time for candles.

no power meant i had to cut my work day for the remote computer job short, unfortunately, but no power also meant i couldn’t go back to typing the book up. very frustrating.

until i remembered my wife’s laptop. several candles and a thankfully full battery later, i got to work:

i managed to squint and peck my way through three more pages before dinner (you can just make out the battery alert bubble on the bottom corner of the screen), making a grand total of 18 pages, yesterday. not too shabby.

the power was back on before bed, thankfully, so let’s see what today brings.

call me crazy (and most people i know do), but i love the cold. after finishing up 7 more pages this evening, i let the dog out for the last time this evening and stood on the deck, breathing in the brisk, crisp night air into my lungs. for me, this weather makes me feel alive.

that said, it also took nearly 48 hours to get feeling back into my fingertips after my nephew’s football game this past saturday evening (they’re state champs!), but i wouldn’t trade it for any amount of hot southern weather.

i think i mentioned that my wife and i have started at a local gym again, recently. it’s always amazing to me how much benefit i get out of this, and it’s at least as much mental as it is physical, getting me out of funks at the very least, and actually giving my brain time off to mull over half-ideas or story blocks and find solutions.

mind you, i hate going. i do. i think of all sorts of excuses and try to convince myself that i’ll go tomorrow or i can skip a day and i’ll be fine.

lies, obviously. i know for a fact how fantastic i feel when i’m done. without fail, literally without fail, i feel better afterward. even if the workout didn’t push me or i felt weaker than i thought, my mind is clearer, my mood is lighter, and i’m up for anything.

so, after hitting the gym this morning, i typed up another 6 pages of story, and enjoyed every minute of it. i’m jazzed again, and anxious to get more done, but we’re actually going to knock off some christmas presents this afternoon, and then we’ve got a nephew’s state championship football game to cheer on this evening (which will require six or eight layers of clothes, apparently, but it’s always great to watch him play), so there’s not much to complain about there (aside from the above complaint about the cold, but hey…).

it’s good to be back on track.

so, taking my lumps from yesterday’s weakness/over-indulgence, i’m back in focus. i managed to get another page done yesterday around the day job and managing to stay awake long enough to eat, which was good. and this morning, i’ve got another 4+ pages down, already, and it’s not yet 8:30.

which is very good, because i have some freelance work i have to do a little travelling for, so i’ve got to head out now, and then it’s the dayjob by the time i get back.

excuses? not at all. challenges? perhaps. life? definitely.

one step at a time.

perhaps one of the greatest benefits i receive from teaching part time is reminding me that my students are among the most driven desirous individuals, who are, every single day, overcoming genuine obstacles and even tragedies, which i have had the (admittedly unfair) fortune never to experience.

are they all saints? no. am i? definitely not. but if i wasn’t doing this work, i could easily forget what real courage and difficulty is.

relevance?

well, when i get into funks like yesterday, i’m reminded me how small i’ve let my world become, and i pick myself back up and push on.

keep moving.

okay, so this should have been a thirty page morning, at least, thanks to my waking up at 3am, entirely awake. to not disturb my wife with my tossing and turnings, i came downstairs. instead of getting right to work, i started with email, of which i had a few, and then got wandering around with some of the hundreds (no kidding – the new camera has the mutli-shot function, definitely a bad idea for trigger-happy me) pictures and videos of my nephew’s recent football games which i need to clean up.

not long after, my wife came downstairs. she’d actually been awake since 2:30. so we had a fire going and she started working on a quilted blanket she’s finishing up for donation to local charity while i tried to organize myself. sounds pretty nice, actually, huh?

then i ruined it. i asked her to tell me about the book she’s been reading, which she’s really been enjoying. i was not a good husband, here. i spent the next hour harassing her about plot flaws and logical gaps i was seeing in what she described. who does this? what kind of arrogant jerk picks apart someone else’s enjoyment like that? it’s still amazing to me that she didn’t stab me in the arm with one of her needles. she’s a saint.

but after she went to work, what did i do? well, i caught up on writing for another hour, which was very good. i got another 3 pages done, which makes 5 from the 2 i did before my first class, yesterday. then i got distracted and wandered the net, solitaire, movie trailers, mindless junk, and suddenly it was 10:30 and i hadn’t even showered. what a schlub.

this did actually kick me into gear, albeit belatedly. in the last hour, i cranked out another 5 pages. thick about that: if i had kept that up most of the morning, i’d have managed 40 pages, instead of 10.

*sigh*

why do we do the things we know we shouldn’t, knowing full well we’ll regret them later?

sometimes it’s good to be reminded of my own failings.

right?

i just finished another 5 pages this evening, which is great, since it took a little under two hours (not including the half-hour interruption of the delightfully geeky The Big Bang Theory, which we adore [and what's up with the loss of My Own Worst Enemy? no fair!] ), meaning i have started typing faster than i was writing. minimal revision, and clearer pages.

what i wanted to mention, though, was the armada of geese coursing over Saratoga Springs this past weekend while my wife and I walked along Broadway before dinner. We’d been out walking the neighborhoods in the bright and early morning and seen various smaller flocks heading past overhead, which was great fun, but in the last hour of daylight, mary pointed up into the sky. there, against the brisk, clear blue forever of sky, was a what looked like a single, enormous formation of geese, all heading back the way they’d come, all at the same time.

we stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up and watching for at least a full couple minutes as the honking birds flapped in steady, almost dreamy V’s across the sky. it was fantastic, and filled my lungs and heart and soul with that indefinable, painfully precious joy of simple life and pure existence for which these words are the palest substitute.

what a wondrous world we still live in.

handwritten pages left: 175