Every Day I Write The Book

Okay, so I've been away for five days or so. Fear not however as I am no less obsessed with writing and being read than before. I've just been busy - first with the aforementioned out of town assignment and then with the lovely people who reside under my roof and insist I play an active role in their lives. Why, the nerve... And, oh yeah, there's another reason I've been silent as of late. Truthbetold, I'm reluctant to talk about it but higher forces have advised I do so in an effort to cement the idea into reality. Soooooo, here goes...

I'm working on The Book.

Sure, I've mentioned it before - but it's mostly been pillow talk. Despite all my deep-seeded wishes to turn the best of what I've already written into a coherent anthology with a beginning, middle and end, I've been damn slack in the Get It Done department. My bad! For the longest time I blamed my busy schedule: job, family, blog - who has time to collate? Besides, who'd wanna read the ramblings of a nobody cameraman with a thesaurus and an attitude, anyway? Okay, I'm still a little fuzzy on that last one, but it hardly matters. See, I've been visited by Extraterrestrials. Not gray, scaly egghead, mind you but other high-flying lifeforms who actually believe my words deserve at the very least to be a book proposal .

But a book proposal is kinda hollow without a manuscript to back it up, so I'm currently in the painful process of re-write. Understand, the very idea of re-write is antithetical to the way I roll. I'm used to getting amped-up on good coffee, pounding the keyboard at dangerous speeds and hitting Send without too much review. Now, I'm paying for it, slogging through screeds and epistles while I wonder how it will all fit together. Luckily, I have some help thanks to a straight shooting ally who knows a thing or three about volume compilation. I'd love to scream their names in exalted praise, but out of respect for the voice on the phone and the wonderful soul who's paying herto do so, I'll hold off.

Just try to understand if my output wanes from time to time, for as frighteningly easy as I find it to blog, I find it just as difficult to burnish my prose in ink. So while I can offer you no time-table and divulge no names, but rest assured I'm finally making headway - more certain than ever that a more tactile version of Viewfinder BLUES is all but inevitable. What may happen to such a work after its difficult birth is still unclear, but I promise more updates as they're needed. For now though ... let us never speak of this.