Some of you seemed to like that silliness from yesterday…I’m glad,  Thank you. That’s a hastily  and extremely shortened and sanitized version of something from the other book I’m working on.  Yeah…I may have mentioned it here before, I’m not sure.  So The Book that I’m working is far different from anything I’ve written before by far.  It’s not funny at all.  It’s pretty dark.  And that’s why it’s taking and has taken so long: I have no way of measuring any aspect of it.  That probably doesn’t make sense.  I’ll try to explain: I’m used to writing funny stuff.  I know if something is funny.  I know it’s funny before it hits the page.  So the first book was essentially a first draft and I knew it was funny long before I handed it over to the publisher: I was cracking myself up as I was writing it.  It was very much like recording a dance song: you’re alone in the studio, but you know this is funky and it’s gonna make asses shake.  So you take it down to the club and have the DJ put it on, and yep…the whole place is on the dance floor shaking their baby makers at each other.  Cause and effect: if you do this (make the song), they do that (shake their asses).  Comedy writing is probably the closest writing can come to that inasmuch as laughter is a physical, observable, measurable reaction,  Cause and effect: if I do this (write this funny thing), then they do that (laugh and give me money).  But this goddamn book isn’t supposed to be funny at all.  So I’m writing the hell out of it, but I will have exactly no idea if it’s worth a damn or not until I hear from other people who’ve read it.  I’ve never been in this situation before…not even in college.
Anyway, whatever, I’ll deal with it.  No choice.
An added level of difficulty comes from knowing that unlike the first book, this one is going to be pretty carefully scrutinized and argued about by some people who have a lot more letters after their names than I do, so I have to be very measured and careful about pretty much every aspect of it, and that is simply exhausting.  So at the end of a day of working on it, I have to write something very different to unwind, so I started work on this other book, a slasher novel.  Just this silly thing that no one outside of maybe a few close friends will ever read.  No agenda, no stress, no rules.  So, of course, it’s a blast to write, is hilarious, and is taking on a life of its own.  It may also, incidentally, be the most politically incorrect thing ever written.  Mmmhmm.

N.P.: “Mama” – Genesis