I’m going away to finish this book. I have a lot of work to do. Luckily, as of this morning I feel energized to do it. For too long I had been languishing, fretting, freaking. Then I spent yesterday with a rather large cephalopod watching Fullmetal Alchemist. (Because that’s our life: we write and read all day and then break for eight-hour marathon viewings of good anime. It’s a good life. A great life. I suspect what people want when they want to write is not the signings and promotions and cons, but this kind of life.) As I was describing the series as a whole (we got through a quarter, yesterday) I said: “Really, this story is about two kids who make a really bad mistake and find out that they can’t rectify it. They can’t fix it. They can’t get back to normal. And every movement the story makes is about proving that, and proving how powerful our mistakes can make us.”
And then I realized I was describing my novel.
Sometime this afternoon, I’m going to get into a car with my best friend and head up toward lake country. With any luck, we’ll get horribly lost — those times make the best stories. But eventually we’ll find our way, and there will be food waiting for us, and friends, and a hell of a lot of work. And then we’ll come home to the city, and there will be people who love us and support us and whose breathing puts us to sleep every night. This is our life (and it’s ending one minute at a time) and it’s the best goddamn life anyone could ask for. I’m grateful every day. I know how lucky I am. I know how little, in some ways, that I deserve it.
It just gives me all the more reason to rock my shit.
So here’s to long trips, wherever they may take us. Fuck normal. Get lost. Make mistakes. Whistle past the graveyard. Just get started.
This post rocks!
And good luck with the novel.