In The Time I Have Left

The Story Thus Far

I went to have some blood work done this morning. During the course of the chit-chat with the phlebotomist, the subject of my employer came up, and I told her that I used to work for Nummi. She has lots of clients that used to work for Nummi, so she wanted to know if I had another job.

No, I said, I was retired.

She looked at my chart, noticed my age. "Oh," she said. "You don't have much time left, you might as well enjoy it."

She must have skipped class the day they had the "things not to say to a patient" lecture. Still. I knew what she meant and appreciated the sentiment. Fortunately my blood work was a requirement of a health insurance application and not part of the treatment for some serious disease. I don't expect to die anytime soon, but I am well aware that I am closer to the end than to the beginning of my life, and indeed, I intend to take full advantage of my situation and enjoy myself as much as I can with the time I have left.

Curiously, my phlebotomist's remark did elicit in me a desire to write today. There are about fifty copies of my novel Stained Glass floating around the world, and pretty soon, they may be the only tangible evidence that I existed. I like to imagine that my granddaughter will hand a copy to her kids one day and say "here, this is your great grandfather." And in the time I have left, I think there are few more things worth saying.

So today, I'm going to hole up with my laptop and write. I need to add to my body of work so that the great grand-kids don't read one book and say "like OMG, great granddaddy was, like, a  pervert."

NaNo Update

Well, I am NaNoinng. Or is it WriMoing. I have gotten through four days and I am current with word count. I will not, however, entertain any questions regarding the quality of these words.

I am well aware of the rules for NaNo, simply stated as "no plot, no problem." And after four days, I think that is a mighty fine rule.

When I began this enterprise, my only real goal was to use it to kick start to my writing. I am very close to the world's laziest writer, and I am the kind of writer who agonizes over words and phrases. I can spend hours going through the dictionary trying to find exactly the right word for the way tulips smell in spring. That kind of diligence/obsession has occasionally paid off with a truly remarkable phrase or two over the years, but more often than not, it results in a lot of stalled efforts. Too many times I get so lost in trying to find something that I forget where I was going with the thought, punch the delete key and turn off the laptop.

I found myself doing that already on the first day. Then, remarkably, I heard a little voice in the back of my head saying "Oh, just get on with it. You're not going to get word count at this rate." I agreed, and then I proceeded to churn out another 1500 words of trash.

I believe in the long run, however, that this will be a profitably exercise. My brother Ray, who is an actual, real life, earns his living as an artist artist, said that he often tells students who complain that they don't know what to draw to get a piece of paper and a pencil and simply begin doodling. Usually, within several minutes, they get caught up with something they've done, and boom, they're on their way.

And so I churn out word count. Who knows, maybe if I shovel enough, I'll find a real novel.