I’ve been awake since about four A.M. being a geek. For some reason, I couldn’t really sleep. I’m not tired yet but I’m sure that later today I’ll be worthless.
What kept me awake was working on a piece of literary magic which I have been super secretly working on for a bit now. In between fits of creative energy that isn’t being sucked out of me by my freelance gig writing articles on finance, culinary schools and legal administrative jobs, I’ve been reading Stephen King’s On Writing which is by far the best book about writing I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot). Reading his treatise on the physical and mental act of writing has been really inspiring.
Simply put, over the last few months, since a little before I was excommunicated from the Church of Divine Profit, I’ve focused on writing as much as I could. Nothing really worth writing home about so to speak, but I’ve been writing for myself, which was 75% of the battle. Two things prompted this new found love with writing. The first was my good friend Gunda started writing professionally. He is a graphic designer by trade, an English teacher by necessity, and a new disciple to the houses of the holy word for profit.
The second was realizing that I’m 38 years old and aside from a startling collection of belly button lint, my life has been devoid of substance. I don’t want to save the whales (they’re noisy, fat and slow), hug a tree (the only thing they’re good for is making huge piles of paper) or roust Bush out of office (I’ll leave that to the hurtling juggernaut, Ralph Nader).
So, I started following through on my promise. I’ve been writing a novel. It has been going ok but last night, I found a groove and couldn’t stop. I found myself awake at well past midnight, putting it all down. Then this morning, in the middle of a dream, I awoke with an idea that couldn’t wait. So I grabbed Jezebel (my new IBook) and hammered out another page or two. I decided to stop mid-sentence so I wouldn’t burn myself out.
Then, still reeling from this new fount of creativity, I decided to install Open Office for OSX on my machine. I can’t believe how powerful this free office productivity suite is! If you hate Microsoft as much as I do, you should look into Open Office.