Okay, since you asked, the new thing is going not too badly, a bit lumpy in places but it’s looking like it might shape into something useful. Although I do wonder if I should maybe make it clear when people ask how it’s coming and I tell them at this stage that I’m something more than forty pages into it that doesn’t mean I’m telling them that any of those forty are going to make it even out of the first draft. Maybe other people write page after page of deathless prose from the moment they begin until they lift up to dry their fevered brow hours later. Not around here they don’t. No, around here they scribble for a bit then they stumble around banging into things for a while not quite totally failing to do anything normal like make food or have a conversation, said failing activity is punctuated by more scribbling, vaguely understood mumbling or silent staring for unnatural periods, all accomplished while something most likely almost burns. Around here they are pleased that the electric kettle has developed an automatic shut off, and they wonder what writers who live in places which don’t believe in electric kettles do. And they are sad. Then they remember they did actually put toast on a while ago, but have now figured out what was wrong with that scene, and so they scribble more, because after all at this point the toast isn’t going to get any colder. Around here they are sensible in that way.
So no, other people in other places may do their creative work in a far more efficient, dignified and professional manner. Not around here they don’t. Contrary to what some friends maintain, no one around here is anything resembling a writing machine. Unless maybe it was one invented by that nice Mister Goldberg.
Oh, is that the stove? Hang on…