Chomping at the Bit

Word count since October has been abysmal (and word count typed has been rarer than sightings of Bigfoot). Reading has been slightly better (I finished 20th Centruy Ghosts last night), but still not spectacular. Right now I feel at loose ends with myself.

At the day job we're in the holiday slump, so I have had time to catch up on the blogeroll. I can't write here. I wish I could. I could probably be pumping out a thousand words a day right at the moment, but there's no privacy, and even typing these blog posts gets more notice than it should. And we're not allowed to bring personal reading materials to work.

On the plus side, for the past few days I've been getting energy and feeling something I haven't felt for a long time. I felt the hunger to write. That deep gut need to write, write well, and get published (which are all different neesds and habits). For about the last half year I've been looking at writing as a job, as my third job. And I think that brought a coolness toward the actual writing part of it. The hunger includes those feelings like being up on stage, I want to write things that are entertaining, things that make people say, "Hey, that was pretty neat," get them to laugh, not just the competant stuff I've been cranking out. I have the need to prove something, to stand on the mountain craig, manuscript held tight in my hands, and shout my revelation in the mad scientist voice (laughter included). That same feeling other people get when they want to drive the cool car, wear the cool clothes, and flash the cool business card at the high school reunion.

I want to get really going on the book. I'm tired of the preliminary stuff I've been able to get done. I want to type it all out. I need to do edits and such on short stories. I want to get those done. Must carve out more time.

And then we have to get the house ready for the Holidays, so there will be time spent there. After tonight I'm hoping the Council Job (job number 2) will quiet down for a bit (after the New Year there will be a flurry of work).

I've been working on the time sink of internet surfing at home, but I've been replacing that with time watching TV (you know, it really sucks, I don't know why I'm watching it). Now I need to switch that back to getting words down on the computer.

Hah! There! I've thrown the gauntlet down for myself. There are flags on the snowy mountain calling me. Their cracking voices pray for my success; their brilliant colors excite my blood, the bull-roarer sound of flapping are my herald trumpets. Hear the world moving, feel the marching feet. It is winter, the trickster stalks in my mind, his track and spore show in the new snow. He is always hungry.