Thursday, May 01, 2003
Happy May Day.
Today I will finish the story. As of yesterday afternoon, the count stood at 10,308 words. I wrote to the editor the see if it would be okay to go to 11,000 (the maximum was 10K) and he said sure. So, I need to wrap this thing up in the next seven hundred words. I did 974 words yesterday. Coming to the end without a title is strange. And it's strange finding the end of such a very long short story. I'm surprised at its length. Apparently first person sf agrees with me. As for tense, it's largely past, though at times it switches unexpectedly to present. It's one of my most complex and non-linear narratives to date. But, as I was saying, coming up to the end, with the weight of so many events, having to end it after having spent almost two weeks doing little else, there's an urgency to find what is absolutely the right ending, to choose that ending from what is probably an infinite number of possible endings. It's a question of what really happens. What's true.
I'd not left the apartment (literally, hadn't stepped outside) since Saturday evening, and Spooky and Jennifer made me get some fresh air yesterday before dinner. We played on the swings and I climbed a magnolia tree. I got two mosquito bites. Sounds like I'm writing home from summer camp, doesn't it? For dinner, I cooked venison with a mushroom and onion gravy. And I didn't work last night. I planted myself in front of the television and watched Enterprise, Angel, and Farscape.
Speaking of Enterprise, going hohumly where no man has gone before, I never got back to my alternate plot. Last we heard, the Klingons had just arrived. I think cannibalism and human sacrifice are in the offing. Maybe flaming Porthos kabobs? And Captain Archer's looking a little more constipated than usual . . .
Trust me. I do this for a living. They pay me to do this. You're in good hands.
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