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Monday, August 23, 2010

The Monday Morning Writer

Monday morning comes for the writer just like everybody else. Long ago I set my schedule to the five day work week and I rarely write on weekends. So like everyone else I have to find myself again after two days of not writing or even thinking about writing. Add a little partying in there and you have a foggy swamp you have to navigate through and you aren't even sure where you left the paddle.

Somewhere there is a novel that ended back on Friday. Amazing you can still track the thing after a few days of  doing just about everything else. But like every person in the country you are sitting down at your desk to find that other world again. It is the world that gives you the circles under your eyes and the death pallor. Conversations from dinners, parties, errant bits of trash float through your brain as you drink coffee and read and try and fire up the motor. It has become a little cranky after two days rest.

Like the rest of the world you wonder again at what the life of doing nothing would be like. Maybe you really don't have to work. Maybe there is a better way. You let that one go as your computer looks for that last file you were working on. Ah here it is. Stuck in a rewrite. Well at least it's not a first draft. Those are a real bitch after two days off...where did you leave that character and what the hell is he doing in a brothel?

But a rewrite is a path through the forest. Let's see, ah yes, this scene. Right. Another sip of coffee. What is wrong here. Only everything. Did I really stop here? Must have. Ok. Second time through, still loaded up with all the redundancy of the first draft. Start here. No. Cut that. Start here. Much better. Another sip of coffee. Right. Here we go. Sigh. Mondays....

William Hazelgrove's latest novel, Rocket Man due out in September. The story of a man who loses his mind after moving to the suburbs.
www.billhazelgrove.com

Books by William Hazelgrove