Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Plan an Escape

So Mike and I are thinking about moving back to Southern California in a couple of years. The prospect freaks me out somewhat because I grew up there, and I never really thought I'd go back. Growing up, I had this beef that the California culture and architecture and setting were all some kind of cheap cardboard imitation of something -- that the proper state of the world involved snow in the wintertime, decent public transit, housing stock more than forty years old, neighborhoods instead of strip malls, and a downtown that people actually live in. You know -- New York.

But now that I've lived in New York for eleven years, I'm beginning to change my mind. In my grand total of two trips west since I left in 1993, I've been able to wrap my brain around the concept that California culture is its own thing, not a knockoff of something else -- the stucco and the strip malls and the sprawl and the occasional sun-addled dippiness are on purpose. Perhaps even in a good way.

In any case, I'm kind of over New York. It's cold, and dirty, and too many people live here, so it's rude. The places I've seen palmed off as livable homes would boggle the mind of a suburbanite. The rents charged for those places would drive the suburbanite to autolobotomy.

So it's time for a change. Mike, at the age of [REDACTED FOR SECURITY PURPOSES] has never lived anywhere else, so he's got to get out of the city for at least a few years or he'll start to grow moss. It will be great to be close enough to my mom to see her more often than once a year. And if we actually swing more than one bathroom, I can pretty much die happy.

Plus, Disneyland. Remember who you're dealing with here!

Word count: 9,452 (+3,059)

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

...I Got Nothing.

In a good way, though. I know I'm supposed to be knicker-twisting about fiction writing and how awful it is and what a failure it makes me feel, and how I'm going to start speaking cynically and wearing black all the time and drinking a lot, but I've actually hit a pretty smooth stretch in the road. I'm writing just about every day; I'm pretty satisfied with the output; I've been able to keep my mind off how much better it would be if someone else were doing it. Having an outline keeps me from second-guessing every single thing right down to the spine of the story the way I used to (let that be engraved on my tombstone, Outlines Are The Greatest Gifts).

Most importantly, some synergy between my new workspace and my changing inclination in the matter of leisure activities is making it much easier for me to do work instead of reading mystery novels and snacking. Even when I rev up the easy chair and hunker down with a giant-sized bag of Cheetos and Gaudy Night, I get bored after about forty-five minutes and stuffed after twenty (I have yet to see dividends on my waistline, but we've barely passed the holidays, give me a break). I wish to heck I could figure out why, but I don't want to hex it.

Anyway, it's all good. For now. We'll see.

Word Count: 6,393 (+2,024)

Friday, January 06, 2006

Work in a Black Hole

Well, dang. You know how I said back in November that I didn't like my work space? Last Saturday, the last day of 2005, we spent five and a half hours moving the study into the bedroom and the bedroom into the study, and damn it if it wasn't like turning on a faucet. That night I sat down and started outlining The Amateurs from scratch, and I finished the outline by Monday evening and have been going strong on first-sometimes-second draft composition ever since.

The only thing I can come up with is that the old study had some sort of sucking black hole of energy in the corner where I sat (which is fine in the bedroom because you want to be sleeping in there, and anyway the only thing in that corner now is a bookcase) because when we first made the move, we discovered that the only way to set up the furniture (we have a really weirdly shaped apartment) is almost exactly the way we had it in the previous spaces, which would seem to negate the purpose. Our faces when we realized that we had spent five and a half hours on that would have won a prize on America's Funniest Home Videos. But we were wrong. Hallelujah.

The only problem is that all the dust we kicked up seems to have given me blacklung or something. I don't even know what to do for a chest cold; all my home remedies are oriented on post-nasal phlegm. Fortunately it seems to be working itself out with no help from me.

Word Count: 4,369 (+1,633)