I sat down and ran the numbers. 1,000 words a day, 5,000 a week. 400 estimated pages, at 250ish words a page, that's 100,000 words. 45,000 words already written, 55,000ish to go divided by 5,000 words a week, that's 11 weeks until a completed manuscript, assuming uninterrupted progress. Throw in another month for editing, and we're looking at 4 months. Let's say...February.

Holy crap.

Nailing down a date is super scary. Slow-encroaching, deadly-creep kind of scary. First, because I know have to hold myself accountable for something, and if I don't make it I'll pretty much hate myself. Second, because it means that I'll officially be enbarking on a long-awaited, maybe-lucrative career as a bonafide AUTHOR of something, which is terrifying all by itself.

Most people I know don't KNOW that I'm aspiring to this. Most of them know me as the stay-at-home dad that I also am, and that's pretty much it. I feel like there's a metamorphosis of perspective coming, and that soon I won't resemble the guy lots of people think I am. It'll be something to adapt to. It'll probably confuse some, also...I can be occasionally socially awkward with people I don't know very well, and in those situations I can barely string together any type of coherence.

Yet here I am. Writing. Bearing my bleeding soul. When one writes something, it tends to be a direct look into their mental process. It's really personal; there's nothing to hide behind. Sure, one could argue that one could hide behind characters much the same way that one could hide behind a puppet, and sometimes it might feel that way, but ultimately what the puppet does and says is going to reveal a different facet of the puppeteer behind it...their way of thinking...perhaps idiosynchroses they are self-conscious about...their fears and dreams.

But, that's the job, right? When you sell your story, you sell yourself, and all the things that contain you and you contain.

Or do most folks only care about the show? Do they care about the puppeteer at all? I don't know. Maybe the answer lies somewhere in the middle, where most answers tend to clump.

Okay, I'm wandering. Back to work.

So I'm sitting here in the middle of a writing day, and I'm buzzing.  And it is occurring to me what is so great about the act of writing; what is so satisfying and exciting and self-actualizing and all that stuff.

I'm not a dancer.  I'm too self-conscious for it.  I don't WANT to be...it's just the shape that nature and experience have pounded me into.  I'm tall, easily seen by everybody in the room, and my feet are bigger than most of the folks around me.  Eyes go the the tall guy; that's what I've learned with my time in this body.  I feel it when I walk into a room or through a crowd, busting the average with my lanky frame.  People look.

Not to mention, for me, there's no room to move on most dance floors.  I have a wing span that could potentially endanger others within its large radius, and so I usually have to pin my arms to my sides and awkwardly shuffle my big man-shoes back and forth and hope I don't knock anybody over.  I don't really get "that feeling" that people who enjoy it get.  Not on the dance floor, anyway.

Writing is a dance.  It's alternating flow and rhythm, sometimes long and descriptive and mechanically dense, complicated and evocative, and other times quick and punctuated.  It's sometimes light and airy like popcorn, fluffy and superficial and meaningless, and then it's a steak slathered in gravy and mashed potatoes, solid and unyielding.  It's quick, quick...slow...quick, quick...slow...STOMP STOMP STOMP!

When done right, like when a master does it, it can pull things out of you, sometimes cradling them and returning them whole, and other times throwing them on the ground and grinding them to delicious powder.

It took me too long to figure that out.  I wish I'd realized it sooner.  Oh well, I get it now.  I suppose that's all that matters.

Back to work.

REAL Life.  REALLY, REALLY Real Life.  Y'know what I'm sayin'?  It can find you through locked windows.  It creeps under doors and slaps you around.  Oh, Real Life, you trampler of productivity, MADE of productivity...you whisperer of obligation and responsibility.  You are the bothersome pseudo-friend that always shows up and nobody knows quite why.  You are the crunchy nut fragments in the peanut butter of what everybody would rather be doing.  (I'm a creamy man.  Well, not a CREAMY MAN, a...you know what?  I think you know what I mean.)

Real Life, you just come in without knocking, sit down in my comfy chair, and start demanding jalapeno poppers.  And I know that you know I don't have jalapeno poppers and would have to make a trip to the store to get some.

Real life, who told you you could borrow my pants?  Why are you wearing my pants?  That also tells me that you've been in my bedroom, and I know for damn sure that I didn't give you permission to be in there.

Real Life, the left side in the toaster isn't popping up.  I know I smelled something toasting yesterday, and I think that you put the toaster away to cover you...y'know...breaking my toaster.  It's frustrating; I know that you have neither A)Money for a replacement, nor B)Toaster repair skills.

Real life...you suck as a person.

But whatever...real life gotta git done.  I forgive you, Real Life.  Let's go and get some froyo so I can show you.  Smooches.

After a relaxing weekend at a volleyball tournament in Chicago (my wife and I are kind of nuts about that sport), I'm back into the swing of things.  Back to work, back to work.  The Footsteps of Cain is coming together, narrative-wise; I think I may have worked through some problems and found a better way to place some hooks in the beginning to pull the readers through.  LOL, I'm sure this is really compelling considering the non-specificity I'm providing.  I guess I'm sadistic.  You shall not know until you know!

If you'll ever know, that is.  I'm trying to hit this thing as hard as I can over the next couple months...make as much progress as I can before the holidays hit with their car trips and multi-Christmases and bustle.  I hate taking breaks from the work...I'd rather live and breath it until it's done.  Yet, as usual, the real world leaks in no matter how airtight my bubble is.  I wonder if there's a solitary cabin at the top of a mountain somewhere that I could get a lease on?  Yeah, just me, an old-timey typewriter, a bear-skin (for some reason) coat, and a scraggly beard, pounding away at an obsession, until one day I could descend from the peaks clutching those precious pages, half-mad.

Nah, I'd never survive it.  No internet connection?  I mean, come on.  The inane, unborn tweets would build up in my brain until I had a mental cave-in.

And so, precious Time and I are fleeting partners.  So why am I blogging when I should be working on the WORK?  Good question, maybe-you and me.  Off I go.  Have yourself a merry little Tuesday.