On strike

markgritter left at what my mom would call oh-dark-thirty this morning. Actually it was more like oh-dark-ten. He'll be gone until Friday.

My brain is apparently pouting after the way I treated it yesterday. Or maybe it's two nights in a row of insufficient sleep. Anyway, I am in that mood where I open a dozen files, add a sentence to each, and close them all again. Perhaps after dinner, I will be able to add more than a sentence every hour to the book. I am not, however, betting the farm on it.

Days like this were probably made for research reading, and I even have several volumes of relevant material for more than one project, some of which are even contracted to give me money.

Still, the feeling that my brains have gone off on an outing somewhere without me is not a particularly nice one, even when it's a nice outing. This is the mode where staring at the screen will allow me to forget why I'm looking at the screen or indeed that my eyes are open in the first place, not the one where it will annoy me into writing something.

If only I could nap and wake up when my brains return. Instead, I keep drinking water (can't hurt, might help) and daydreaming and realizing that what I'm thinking about cannot by any stretch be related to the book, or any short stories or articles current or future. That while some kinds of thinking qualify as work, this is not one. But the brain is in such rebellion that it's daydreaming smells, and that's much harder to ignore. Stupid brain. I don't suppose anybody wants to trade me brains for the afternoon.

Welcome back, brain.

And that's chapters 44, 57, 60, and 64, plus some work on 30. This is one of the advantages of writing non-sequentially: towards the end of the first draft, things start falling together, and you find that with a bit of connective tissue, things feel a bit all right. In a shitty rough draft fashion.

I need to do other things. I need to do short stories and edits and contract work and other other things, but it's been so damn long getting to this point that I keep thinking, okay, all right, four chapters off the list? Go for it, brain, be my guest. We're finishing off the mouse tornado plague tonight? Fine, mouse tornadoes it is, I'm easy.

This is the point at which people having coffee/lunch/dinner with me is least coherent, and most welcome, I think. Especially people who don't count as people, because people who count as people are difficult at this stage. (What I love about introvert friends, and I think I've said this before, is that you can say, "oh, no, no, you don't really count as people any more," and they will understand that it's a good thing. This is also an advantage to extroverts married to introverts: they've had a chance to witness it if not experience it firsthand.)

Blerrrrrg. If I don't run away from the computer, I will start working on Chapter 43. And I can do that tomorrow. I can, I can. And it will be fine.