blindside
Last year I was out of work for a month. My sciatic nerve was apparently caught in the joint of my hip, and the pain finally got so awful that I couldn’t walk. So, no working at the bookstore.
I’m still trying to pay for that, but then, after way more Doctor’s appointments and therapy than I could afford, it went away. On it’s own. It was amazing. I just woke up and it was gone.
Which is why it was so alarming that it came back, without warning, three days ago. I can’t walk, and for the first day, I couldn’t sit or lay down comfortably either. just getting downstairs in the morning brought tears to my eyes. It’s better now, but I only have one more day off, and then I have to go back to work. I have to make enough money to pay bills, don’t even think about Christmas. So you would think I could have spent the last few days writing, but I could barely concentrait enough to even read. What a waste of time. I will go crazy if it lasts a month, I swear.
Bowie and Ziggy
So I’ve been reading “Bowie” the new biography, and it’s making me realize that as much as I think I got right in the novel, there’s so much that I got wrong. Part of me wants to go back and tear it apart, fix it. Because no matter how much I say I’m done with Ziggy, I’m never really done with Ziggy. I’m like Asia. He’s too much a part of my life to put him very far back in my brain. The only reason I haven’t abandoned the new novel and gone back to him is pride. How can I admit that something that took me twenty five years to write isn’t finished? how can I possiable say that?
I can’t. I won’t. It’s got to be done.
Always Crashing In the Same Car
Maybe it’s the moving thing. I took the day off, partially because I couldn’t stand another uninterupted day of work, and partially because I really needed to start packing my bedroom to move. So, of course,I didn’t spend as much time packing as I did tossing away things that I forgotten I had… Things that I’ll never miss.
Probably.
So I was already feeling weird. Then went I checked my email tonight, and saw mail from Penguin, I felt even weirder. Did I send something to Penguin? Well, I only have the one something, right? I only have the book, and I didn’t even remember that it was “in the mail.”
No, they didn’t want it. They enjoyed it, and all, but they didn’t think they could sell it. Okay. I know it’s stupid, but I’m always disappointed when I get a rejection. But now I also feel unsettled. I have no place to live–or too many, at the moment, and I have a book that has no place either. I keep trying to move forward, but things just keep hanging me up. I know this won’t be forever, but I am having a hard time seeing the end of it. Tell me there will be an end to it….
Steampunk
I’ve had this idea for a steampunk, gender story for awhile, but never really knew enough about Steampunk to write it before. I still know next to nothing about differnce engines and clockwork, but I started it a few days ago. Three pages, not much, but enough to make it stick in my brain, hard. It’s about a man who has grown up as an exhibit in a show of “Alchemic Oddities.” It’s basically a freak show. Rusch isn’t remotely human, with his grey tone skin, double row of jagged teeth. Those are only surface diffenences. So far, he’s the headliner in the show, and he knows he’s the breadwinner. He is no more than property to the owner of the show, Dr. Cheney, literally, since Dr, Cheney created him. The other exhibits in the place are the failures, or sometimes pieces of failures from the Doctor’s efforts. Rusch is his one success.
I have a vague idea of what will happen next, but I love the first part. Usually I have to get at least half way in a story before I begin to hate it completely. I have pages before that happens.
Meanwhile, I have the novel, stalled still. I can feel myself splintering. I want to finish the novel. I want to write the Steampunk story. I want to write the story of Ziggy and Asia and Eric in Ann Arbor. But I have not the energy for each of the stories at the same time.
I hate getting old.
Fall
So this is how it starts. I begin to notice the days getting shorter. I begin to notice that the book’s still not done. Then I realize, it’s almost November. It’s the beginning of retail hell, and this year I’m trying desperatly to move, but it’s alos Nanowrimo.
I decided I wasn’t going to do it this year. That’s crazy talk, I thought. And yet, there’s that half finished novel sitting on my hard drive, just looking at me. And I can’t resist the lure of a fake deadline.
So, I’m almost half way through Fall, right now. I’m competely stalled out, and I know that I need at least 5000 words to make it into a book, and I know how to get those words. They may not make any sense, but I’ll get them, right?
But, having taken the better part of thirty years to write my first book–that nobody will buy–I know that finishing won’t be enough. I thought that it was the most important thing in my life with the last book. And now it’s sitting on my hard drive. Maybe that’s what’s stalling this one. Wish me luck.
