Back on Track

If you read his comment on my "Bad Day" post, you caught the gentle ass-kicking my employer gave me after he came out of the mountains and had a chance to check in on my work. "Stop it with the Stegner whining". . . or something like that. "The guy didn't his his stride until he was in his 50s." (That puts me on track, as a sidenote.) He's right. I did manage to get Stegner's prose out of my head; it was just after I watched "Bull Durham" the other night: "Annie? Who's this Annie? Get her out of your head, meat. Don't think, meat." You know what I mean if you've seen it. So, I got him out of my head and had a pretty compositional afternoon. It was one of those writing sessions that feels like I have swum miles out into the ocean, and I'm bobbing in the middle of purple green swells that promise doom in their depths, nothing around me but their glassy mountains and an open sky above. Nothing changes but the rhythm in my body. To keep afloat, I have to swim a little, float a little, tred water some, then swim some more. I get into a character's head, then back out, move to the setting, describe an object, get bored, swim around it, and start writing from the other side. Never leaving the open sea. It wasn't but a few hours, but I could have stayed out there til my skin got so pruney, I'd require a day on intravenous fluids for anyone to recognize me.

I'm happy in my hermitage, to answer the few inquirers about my social needs. I'm suited to it; the signs have always been there.