I’m very tired, but work progresses. The book is at almost 98,000 words, and will probably top out at 100K ish.
I’m doing about thirty pages a day, which puts me at completion at roughly the end of next week or the beginning of the following week, but either way, I should be done by the end of May. Then I’m gonna take a well-earned bloody break for a few.
Today I had a strange scene where I went into a 7-11 and saw the clerk being accosted. I was in perfect position to utterly ruin the day of the potential assailant, but he decided to leave. Had he taken a swipe at the clerk, I would have taken him down. It was literally a hair away from a really crazy scene. Instead he left, and now I have gummy worms and half a day of work.
In another universe, though, I karate chopped a bum today.
I don’t want to give away my next novel, though I have it in my head, which is always a reassuring feeling. I know the major beats. I know the people in it. It may not even be my next novel, given Cura Te Ipsum (did I say that out loud?), but it’s there, like the story for Anamerican. I’ve had Anamerican for years now, and I don’t write it, simply because I know it’s so compact and ready I can do it at any time. I’m going to save it for times when the well is dry. It may never be written.
But the next novel has such a strong and stirring theme in my head that I think about it a lot, and draw parallels as to why I’d want to write a novel like that. It’s because I spend my life in a 12X12ish box, always looking outside, trying to wrestle my inner demons.
It occurred to me this morning that it’s why I find two scenes, though not particularly effective or memorable, so incredibly powerful for me that I can’t watch them without weeping (usually with emotional relation, not so much sadness). This is one, House detoxing:
It’s backwards for some reason, but works mostly the same. It’s better when he throws the cup to her on the opposite side, but stylistically, it conveys my point.
This is another, Desmond saving the world by pressing six meaningless buttons, every hour and a half. The music is what really makes it unintentionally powerful. I mean, it’s obviously meant to display Desmond as this freaky fuck that you wonder what he’s doing, but I’m sitting there like, “With you, Desmond! Good choice of music.” The ratcheting cut to people looking in on him like he’s crazy is equally jarring. When REAL PEOPLE appear, he arms himself and prepares for battle. There’s enough in that reaction to write a book to. I will.
Are writers in prison? Are they institutionalized? Can a person do that to themselves consciously and enjoy it? Or at least snow themselves enough to believe it’s not a prison? Is it prison if you don’t want to leave? Etc.
I didn’t realize why I so loved these scenes until today, when I thought of them in the context of the mains being me. With House, it’s a culmination of five years of work, but that’s not why I enjoy the scene. I enjoy it because sometimes I just feel strapped to a desk, sweating out the bad medicine. I feel like I’m riding a stationary treadmill and trying to save the world with numbers no one will ever see. I feel like Winston Smith.
There is a great beauty and fear in this concept, and I intend to exploit it. I intend to put a man in a tiny room from which he cannot escape, a room he will come to embrace, and then a room he will have to leave.
They make it seem as if it’s snowing outside, because the blossoms have covered the ground. Beautiful.
My grandmother died a year ago yesterday. It beat me up last night, but today I’m feeling hopeful, optimistic, and productive. I’m sure she’d have liked that.
I polished the rest of a script this morning, wrote a new column, and pounded out about two thousand words of editing, and yet I feel like I’ve taken a half day. Bah, he said. Numbers don’t lie:
Daylight Savings is messing with my head. I say we just do “Fall Back” every two weeks until night is day, and cycle it, just completely screw with everyone’s circadian rhythm until zombies emerge from the ground and another earthquake spins the world off its axis. I mean, if we’re gonna fuck with time, let’s do it right, huh?
Speaking of fucking with time, remind me to tell you a little about Cura Te Ipsum some day. And that’s all I have to say about that.
