Patrick Stewart cannot be killed

 I saw friends the other day that I hadn’t seen in months. Their surprise that I had drastically changed my hair style was like a gauge for time. I remembered warmer weather and fireworks. I remembered that I had cut my hair around the time that I started the new job. I’d like to say somewhere in there I also remembered when I had last blogged, but that would be a lie. 

But it would be true if I said I had been writing. Not true in the sideways sense that the next rewrite is coming along, which it is, or in a distracted sense in that the 5^th book is out and available for purchase, which it is, but in the pure sense that I had the idea of something new, and started pecking away at it, and have put a dozen or so thousand words onto paper.

 

Combined with the work schedule, which is on its way to becoming routine, it is a grind. I don’t have a lot of excess energy for it, though I have identified time to devote, but consistently nearing E on my fuel tank has led to some odd dreams and sobering moments. Work is good, I will say; I am happy to do it, and my co workers and the students seem to be glad to have my services, which is a nice feeling. There are times when I feel, or fear, my writing might be suffering because I am not working with language as closely on a day-to-day basis, but even if that were valid, I am investing in different muscle groups that I feel are just as valuable, which is very gratifying.

 

The story is also a new place where I did not imagine I would be, this time last year or at any other point. It was not planned, at least not in the way so many other creations I attempt are planned. I was thinking about it, and I was excited, but the first few pages came about spontaneously, while I was in the office, just to see if I could. It was an experiment, in a conscious sense, but it was an accident in the way it grew explosively and carried me along with it. For a while there, I did not know when it would stop. For a brief moment, I did not know what it was.

 

Now I believe it to be the kind of short story writers write to attract the attention of publishing houses, to entice them into contracting the longer work. In the past I have written a whole novel, or close to it, and sent off the first sizable chunk. I was petrified of sending something incomplete off, and finding someone all too excited to read the rest, when there was nothing more to read. It would just be my luck. But I find myself feeling more fearless these days. Still, I can see the end, but it isn’t quite done. I have been blessed with a comparative bounty of readers willing to give me their thoughts, which has been new and refreshing and I want to use them as best I can to really make this thing crisp. All of that has been exhausting and exhilarating.

The multiverse concept has been popularized lately, so I'll go with this metaphor. I'm still here, but it is a different here, and I think maybe I might be a different me. But still writing.