I go back to the trenches tomorrow, so I spent the day playing Zuma’s Revenge revising the chapters I wrote this past weekend and trying to figure out a realistic reason why my hospitalized character might need a EEG so another character could make a fond joke about her abnormal readings . . . But I eventually admitted defeat and killed it.
Poor, funny, throwaway line, we hardly knew thee.
The rest of it was pretty good, after a bit of tinkering and rearrangement, though I was once again reminded that my brain shuts down around midnight and even my stream of subconsciousness dries up. After that, everything seems derivative and clunky*—but I keep reminding myself that every word I put down gives me something to work with, even if I end up sending it to the outtakes file. My tinkering isn’t aimless and I am solving problems.
The world may not be better off, but my story will be.
To borrow something I overheard at Bouchercon,** I don’t have to write the best book ever written—I just have to write the best book I’ve ever written. Over and over and over.
And hope that I’ve filled the plunger with enough glue.
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Wondermark! is the brainchild of the brilliant, handsome, and non-litiginous David Malki !
* See Dick write. Dick cannot spell. See Jane write. Jane has a problem with punctuation. See Spot write. Spot has no concept of narrative conventions.
** I honestly don’t know who exactly—an older man with a midwest accent at the table behind me at the Thai place Friday evening (could have been Thursday). I grabbed my notebook instead of turning around and by the time I could casually manage it, they were leaving.
Earful of Cider 