moment

i just finished my first new story draft since may 2005 and the sofa is sweaty where i was sitting for three hours. i had the a/c on low cool. there is a treble clef drawn in pencil on the side of the a/c, i was meant to live in this apartment, i want to be in here all day long, i play piano every hour, just a couple songs till i get aggravated, i have prodigious muscle memory, i sat down and played the first verse of billy joel's 'lullaby' i even started in the right key. i even remembered the bridge which is the hardest part. i can sing medium-loud in here because i don't share walls with the neighbors but i do sing directly into the wall that is the stairwell for the upper apartments. i have a glass of wine and season 1 disc 4 of madmen, which has four episodes on it, not three but four, because the gods are smiling. they're not particularly smiling because of the short story, which does not feel like an accomplishment. it feels like a piece of shit. it is a piece of shit. but it is twenty-five pages long and 6,618 words. the words don't make sense together, but i wrote all the parts. i am starting to think it would make more sense as a one-act play, honestly, because it's almost entirely dialogue and not in a nicholson-baker vox kind of way. my goal was to finish it, and it doesn't feel finished but i got through it, which is basically the same thing. my goal was to finish and not care about it being bad because it had to be bad. and it is bad. but it is long, and i got through it faster the longer i wrote. i'd written five pages over several months, then i wrote ten pages in about a week, and i just wrote another ten since thursday. ten pages in five days is basically the speed i was writing at in college. so it's safe to say i'm not blocked. but very out of shape. whatever, whatever, whatever. i have a non-celebratory glass of wine. i get to watch madmen and stay up as late as i motherfucking want.

Comments

[matthew]

you win!

[ann]

yup!