Blizzard!

I've been here two and a half years and this is the first snowfall that's stuck around more than an hour.  

"A pool of mermaids"

It was in the heat of deadline that gonzo journalism was born while he was writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine, he recounted years later in an interview in Playboy magazine.

"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."

Instead, he said, the story drew raves and he was inundated with letters and phone calls from people calling it "a breakthrough in journalism," an experience he likened to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."

-- New York Times obituary on Hunter S. Thompson (1939-2005)

The Spleen Cafe

Florence, December 2004 

Dawn Patrol

I'm heading back to work this morning, three kilos lighter, after four days off. I've felt better ... though not usually at 6 a.m.

Observation: From the tenor of the birthday and post-birthday e-mails I've received, my closest friends and relatives do not read this blog. (Total strangers do. Herself does.) So I've decided to pull a Dr. Phibes on you, salting these entries with clues. So that will teach you ... though not before a couple of you end up as poodle-chow.

Happy birthday to me

Yes, the big 4-7. To get an early start on the celebrations, I came down with an infection that necessitated a trip yesterday to the American Hospital emergency room. They fixed me up with an IV to make the excruciating pain go away, then sent me away with three medications, a note to take a week off from work, and a directive to make a follow-up appointment.

It's all my fault, of course. The day before, I was thinking how fortunate it is that I've never gotten sick or injured in Paris, where I would be hard-pressed to describe my symptoms. Fortunately, the roommate bundled me off in a cab and they speak English at the American Hospital, as you might have guessed.

The upside is I'll probably lose some weight. It's 3 p.m. and today I've had one (1) banana and about (50) milliliters of SlimFast. I'd kill for some Chicken McNuggets, but it's a hollow threat. I'm going back to bed.

Nose first

I put my nose in my writing* today for the first time in more than a month. I now have seven little piles of paper, representing seven projects, neatly arranged on my desk. One of them is notes for a 300-word gadget review; another is reminders for a couple blog entries. Those are gimmees.

Then there's three short stories for which I have some notes and some text, but not a whole bunch. These are the "fresh" projects. One of them came to me when Herself and I visited Brussels last May.

Another pile, substantially taller than the others, represents a story that was "fresh" when I thought of it about five years ago. I've worked on it on and off since then, sometimes for a couple weeks straight. Sometimes I think it's 90 percent there; sometimes I think I should pitch it.

Then there's a mighty pile of paper, the rewrite-in-progress of a 25,000-word novella that was well-received at Walter Jon Williams's Rio Hondo workshop in the summer of 1999.

These last two are what I cheerfully refer to as any-idiot stories. As in "any idiot could polish these off in a couple weeks." I've got a few more of those lying around, and this idiot will be taking another crack at them in due course.

Finished Sebstian Junger's The Perfect Storm today. I bought it when it came out in '99, wondering about this guy who came out of nowhere to write a non-fiction best seller. I've got literally a hundred books on my "to read" shelf (I just counted them), and at this rate I could burn through them all by the end of the year, assuming I develop no external life and buy no more books. (The latter is unlikely.) Then I could spend another couple years reading back issues of magazines. I get pleasure from reading books, and a separate pleasure from buying them. Now I'm trying to cultivate the pleasure of walking into a bookstore and coming out empty-handed.

Before settling my nose in my writing, I played a truly epic game of Risk: 37 turns, when the normal game is 10 or 12, and I was lagging until the 32nd. I know, I know, it stirs the blood.

* "Put your nose in your writing every day" was Herself's advice. (Credit where due.) It has a simplicity that my own writing prescriptions have always lacked. I come up with things like: Write for two hours a day, every day. Or except on weekends. Or except when I'm away from home. Or do a Hemingway -- 500 words per day. Not including revisions. Or including revisions. Or with a discount for revisions. Make up missed days. Or not. Use a rolling average. Multiply by pi and always allow for windage. Like that.