The draft's ready to go out--has gone out, to the folks who asked for it to be emailed and whose addresses I had. Snailmail will have to wait until Monday.
I still like it. Even in moments when it seems to me to be unpardonably derivative, and I seem to myself to be a hack of the worst sort, it looks like reasonably readable derivative hackwork. And I'm not in those bleak moments all the time.
For about ten minutes on Friday, I had this notion of taking a day off. Well, not completely off, because if I don't at least write a sentence or mark up a page of hard copy or make some kind of token effort, I become Crazed and Unpleasant. But a day mostly off. I was waiting for Dan to finish reading the draft, because I wanted at least one trusted reader to have a chance to tell me what didn't work, before I sent the story off to some people who haven't read my fiction before.
My brain did not want a day off. It demanded index cards.
Oh, come on, I told my brain. We've got errands to run, students to teach, a bicycle to ride, and besides, we finished something short, for once. Brevity merits celebration.
INDEX CARDS, said my brain.
Okay, okay, index cards.
GHOST STORY NOTES, it added.
But that's going to be another novella. There's no way that story is going to play out right in under 25K. Can't we try something shorter? Easier to sell?
NOW. My brain was not happy with me.
So I ran off fresh hard copy of the notes and fragments for one of the stories I started poking at back in October but didn't get far with. The first four pages are continuous narrative, and I'm actually pretty happy with them, considering that I barely remembered having written them. Friday got me a very incomplete, not-yet-organized, index-carded look at the plot. Some of the characters are beginning to talk to me, but the ghost of the cigar-shop owner thinks I have an insufficient appreciation for Bruce Springsteen, and isn't interested in telling me any more of his story until I acknowledge the supremacy of the Boss.
matociquala's right. Writers is nutz.
Or perhaps it's just incipient brain fever. I actually am feeling under the weather.
I don't know if it's that I pushed myself too hard, biking on the towpath today, or if I'm starting to come down with the bug that's been going around.
Hey, those of you who've had the bug--what were the early signs?