Is This Thing On

Today is the day I returned to work (both day job and the real job), and that means my blogging hiatus is over. Admittedly, it should have been over back on the first of January, but those of you following the twitter feed will already be aware of the somewhat crappy way I kicked off 2011. I spent New Years Day dealing with the catastrophic aftermath of an accident with a bottle of red wine, a somewhat less catastrophic car accident on my way to pick up cleaning supplies and a bunch of new work shirts, and an encounter with a rusting hot water system in the garage that caused my elbow to swell up to twice it’s normal size. If I’d blogged on the day, I probably would have spent five hundreds trying to say what can be summed up as, essentially, fuck fuck fuck.

I’ve just spent the last two hours banging out some much needed worded count on Paradise City, the first of my Flotsam stories to appear in the Edge of Propinquity this year, and it appears that I’ve finally found the goddamn awesome that’ll give the series its own identity.

And really, thank fuck for that, ’cause it’s about time I tracked something down. This project’s been haunting me for the last two months – I’d pitched it a while back and it got accepted a scant few days before Dad’s heart attack, so I kind of lost track of everything in the month that followed. By the time I actually had the opportunity to write again, I had utterly lost track of why I thought this series of stories was a good idea in the first place. I still had plots, of course, and structural plans and ideas. I just didn’t have the intangible something that makes some stories fun to write and some stories…less fun to write.

Normally that isn’t a huge problem, ’cause the awesome usually shows up if you keep poking an idea, but  I’d somehow forgotten that amid the hospital visits and the new day job and the general flailing around that ended 2010. Now there is marathon writing sessions taking place to make sure the Awesome is delivered on time, especially since I’d managed to copy the deadline down wrong and suddenly lost three days on what was already a tight schedule. I will, presumably, blog more about this when I’m not busy chugging Gatorade and writing like a demon to get things done on time.

To borrow a phrase from the inimitable Jason Fischer who recently went through the metamorphosis from flailing panic to kicking-the-arse-of-the-deadline writing machine: it’s time to throw down the Gauntlet and unleash the goddamn Fists of Steel. Such is the refreshing power of deadlines. You don’t have any other goddamn choice.

Project: Paradise City, Flotsam Story One
Current Draftage: 980 words
Total Draftage: 980 words
Panic Levels: Moderate, but not overwhelming
Spokesbear Status: Full of I Told You So, Dumbarse.
Procrastinatory Activity Du Jour: blogging, obviously
Next Procrastinatory Break: Probably at 3,500 words.
Current Sountrack: Welcome to the Jungle, Guns and Roses