Writing and my everyday life

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First, a link: Donald Maas’s The Career Novelist is now available as a free download. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but it looks pretty interesting, despite being from 1996.

Second, my editor asked me to hold off working on Man Bites World until we can straighten out the proposal. She has some concerns with it. Which is fair and, you know, that’s why she reads the proposal. She wants to make sure that the fantasy thriller I’m supposed to write isn’t going to be a daring homage to my two favorite movies, PORKY’S 2 and THE BICYCLE THIEF.*

But I worked on it anyway. It was just a few hundred words, but I couldn’t leave it alone.

And, because I’m not trying to meet a daily or weekly goal at the moment, I took some time to finish the book I’m reading. After three or four false starts, I dug into Murder Among Children by Tucker Coe (a pseudonym for Donald Westlake). It’s a mystery novel written in the mid-sixties, with all the racial and gender issues that implies, but the writing was appealingly bleak and the protagonist engaging. I’m tempted to dig up the rest of the books (I know there are only five, with a personal closure of sorts) to see if and how he deals with his personal demons.

And now I have to sign off, do some research here at the library (my wife found some green mold growing on the wall behind a piece of furniture, and I need to research the best way to deal with it. Seattle, you annoy me.) and then hit a couple of stores. I need to buy a couple of things for the Superbowl/Puppybowl party my son and I will have tomorrow, but not so much that I leave a bunch of food lying around the place.

See, on the Monday after the game, my wife and I will be doing a fast. It’s not one of those crazy lemon juice and cayenne fasts I used to do (she hates those); it’s this thing with specific foods you’re supposed to eat and so on. Anyway, I don’t do these to lose weight (although that happens). I do them because it’s a stark way to look at the way I eat and my emotional connections to food. The first fast I ever did was a revelation, and I’m curious to see what insights I’ll get this time.

I plan to write about it over the next week and a half, though, so be ready to skim if that sort of thing doesn’t interest you.

Off to the reference shelves. Hope you guys are having a nice day.

* Quick note: I haven’t actually seen either of these movies.