Getting Used to This Writing Thing

Got to the end of another new story today. 4300 words. I think I really nailed the end. I never think I nail the end, usually because I never do nail the end. But I think got all of this one.

It needs a title, and the language needs a lot of love. But, hey! I'm looking forward to scratching on paper with pencil for a few days, then I'm going to take a final pass at "A Comedown" and sling it over someone's transom.

Not Writing: Excuse #17

At 5 a.m. I switched on the lamp in our den, surprising a bat.

First, I screamed like a little girl. Not a lot of screaming. Nothing to dishonor myself or be embarrassed about. Just a short, high one. Didn't even wake anyone up. Then the cat and I watched from the safety of the hallway as the bat flopped around the room, finally landing on the chimney and scrabbling around. I watched it for a long time.

Eventually he went into the fireplace (probably where he got in). I locked the cat in the laundry room, grabbed the computer, and did some googling, one eye on the screen, one on the bat. Armed with some knowledge, heavy-duty gloves, a dirty towel, and one of those disposable Tupperware-type containers, I caught the bat at about 6:30. First with the towel to immobilize him, then with the container, popping it over him and scoonching the lid up under.

I let the bat go in the back corner of our lot. With the container upside down, I popped open the lid. He dropped out and flapped away.

I've got six pages of a new story, but no pages written today!

Doldrums

• Tobias Wolff's Our Story Begins
• Tobias Wolff's Old School

It's hard to see how the guy who wrote "Hunters in the Snow" could get any better, but, to me at least, it seems he did. For evidence, I point to "A White Bible," which I've added to my pantheon of stories that really do it for me. I enjoyed the story collection so much I re-"read" Old School on CD in my car. Writer porn.

You know, I don't own a single Wolff book. I've checked it all out of the library because of indigence and so on. And for once I regret it. But I expect he'll still be in print when I've got a couple of pennies to rub together. Not to go all hyperbolic or anything, but this guy is really and truly writing for the ages. You know, assuming anyone still knows how to read in the far-flung future.

About the time I was finishing up Wolff's collection, I found myself more or less finished with my latest story, "A Comedown." I got to that point where between revisions I was changing back the things I'd edited in the previous draft. Plus I found that I'd cut a little deep in one spot, trying to get it beneath 8000 words. So time to put it away. I hope when I come back to it, after working on something else for a while, all I'll need to do is brush it up and send it out.

So I'd planned on picking up another short story I'd noodled with a little after finishing "A Comedown." But I wasn't really fillin' it, as the kids say. So I thought instead that I'd schedule a week vacation from writing, maybe sleep in (6 a.m. -- decadent!), stay up late watching a movie or reading. Whatever. That lasted the weekend, then I started getting antsy and having these weird dreams I get sometimes where everything is narrated like a story. So I got up at 4:55 a.m. this morning and started combing through various files for story ideas. Didn't meet anyone I felt like marrying, as it were, but I'm still thinking about it . . . .

I also can't decide what to read next. This is the peril of reading something like Wolff's great story collection. Everything just pales. I tried reading some skiffy, just to shake things up, but hit on three stories in a row that were soporific in the extreme, so no skiffy for right now. Maybe some novel . . . ? he says abstractedly.

Don't know what to read. Don't know what to write. No hair left to pull out. What now?

Inglorious Bastards

The Little Lady needs your help casting Quentin Tarantino's upcoming WWII man-on-a-mission movie, Inglorious Bastards. Go. Be heard!