Two stragglers

So first Fat Cyclist called me out, and then I called him out back, and then he missed his story deadline, and then I made my deadline for “The Rambler, Part 2,” and gave him more time and he got “Last Ride on the Kokopelli” done, and then November 30th at midnight, I missed my deadline for getting the whole book together and up for sale.

So…I can’t tell who won anything. I think we both lost—but we also both finished our stories, and I’m about to finish the book. That’s noble and honorable, right? Coming in under your own power after you miss the cutoff?

Here’s the cover:

It still needs its back cover and spine designed, a missing author blurb snagged, ISBNs registered, and some other stuff that somebody’s got to do and I’m the only one here. I tried. Sometimes N+1 is how long it’s going to take to finish a book.

Should be a couple more days or so.

We also never quite got around to agreeing on exactly what would happen if one of us lost, but now that both of us have, it seems to me it should be doubled.

So if we take [never really figured out this bet] and double it, we get…uh…well, I think we get “donate money to each other’s favorite charity.”

What say you, FC?

Acceptance

LAST AUGUST 1, I moved from an apartment in New York City where I lived with my wife and kids to a duplex in Connecticut where I live alone half the time and with my kids half the time. At that same moment, unrelated, I lost about 80% of my income.

So there’s been a lot of stuff to take care of. A lot of it, I didn’t know I’d have to take care of, but I’m the only grownup here, so care of has been taken. Or anyway, mostly taken. I now have my own floor steamer. I have an oil heater. I have a big cheery orange stock pot, a dining nook, a scratched car with a lease I shouldn’t have signed, two Freecycle window boxes of geraniums that face the wrong way on the porch because I don’t care if you can see them, hooks in the kitchen for three bike helmets and a tarp over two little bikes outside, a slow cooker, a roasting pan, a half-sanded Goodwill dresser for my bike clothes, a tiny Japanese clothes washer in my bathroom (with lint catchers and mesh laundry bags and a collection of detergents and stain removers in the cabinet above it, and we, the Snyder boys, who are a family, have a system), and a task grid called SCHOOL MORNINGS AT DAD’S hanging on a clipboard where we can all see it at breakfast. I have sleep deprivation and less hair, I have maybe 40% of my income back, and I usually have yellow flowers in Mason jars or whisky bottles by the kitchen windows.

I threw away all the salad forks. They are not missed. I gave away the microwave oven. It’s not missed either; Snyder boys cook. I got rid of all but the three bowls I thought we’d ever need at one time. That was less smart than the salad forks and the microwave.

I have regrets, deep exhaustion, a body that’s rarely ridden farther than the grocery store since the double-century 18 months ago, a roll-top desk half turned into a charging station, and not a stack, but an occasional discovery of papers from school that I haven’t read. And my floors are better than they were before I bought the steamer, but you don’t step in here and go Wow, this man’s quite the housekeeper!

My kitchen is clean when I need that symbolism more than I need to get somebody’s book designed, or when the boys show up and I want them to think I clean things all the time. It was cleaner during the first six months, when there was less paying work and more need to feel I was taking care of things.

I do take care of things. Not all the things. There sure are a lot of things.

ONE HALF-THING I took care of as I stumbled out one door and into another was I paid all the contributors to RIDE 3. I knew I was going to lose my grip on getting it edited, designed, and published, though I didn’t know for how long, and I didn’t want the weight of not paying people pressing down along with the weight of not having it done yet.

Blog entries, the good ones, are from impulse and urgency. There was one every couple of months. As real writing time came back, in tiny spans, I spent it half-assing the writing that meant the most to me, which was novel #5. It’s been a 14-year gap since novel #4. Then I’d quarter-ass my RIDE 3 story, which not only has a couple of plot things still left to solve, but is in iambic pentameter and has to rhyme.

Then the book will need designing, all the stories need typesetting, the POD has to be set up, the ebook versions have to be made, everything needs uploading, I have to figure out who to send it to for reviews and put together some sort of promo thing and blog it…

Too much.

The contributors checked in every so often. I wrote back and said I’m doing my best, but it’s going to be a while. And I was doing my best. Eighth-assed was my best.

They were nice.

Except one.

FROM ELDEN NELSON, Fatcyclist:

Click it to read the rest. It’s just mean.

Yeah, I know it’s been two days since he called me out. I’ve been busy.

SO two things:

One, I hate when people say I have nothing to apologize for instead of accepting my apology. So—Elden, you’ve got nothing to apologize for, and I accept it anyway.

Two, you’re on.

Four, RIDE 3 will be up at Amazon by December 1, in time for holiday gift-giving that doesn’t just mean “Christmas gift-giving.”

Five, it’ll have my story, The Rambler, in it–either Part 2 of a sufficient length to be clearly not a cheat (Part 1 was in RIDE 2), or the whole thing.

Six, wait til you see these stories…

Seven, okay that was nine things.

Anyone who doesn’t make his deadline has to…donate Some Amount To Be Determined to a charity of the other’s choosing, as well as write a ballad praising the other’s bike prowess and calf and/or butt definition.

IF I DARE? Oh, I dare. Because I know the secret.

Some people think art comes from inspiration.

Some people think it comes from hard work.

But you and I know. True art comes from abject terror of public shaming.

You got six days…tick tock…

Some notes to myself, upon embarking on draft 2

THE PERSONAL

You can tell when it’s special and when it’s not.

You can tell when it’s right and when it’s not.

You know more about words than most readers. Use the right ones. They’ll get it. Eaters don’t need to be chefs. Chefs need to be chefs.

You’ve learned about structure from reading and thinking about mysteries. Use that.

But you’ve never actually cared who did it, and you’ve learned more about structure from jokes than from mysteries. Use that more.

You’ve never dreamed of being a financial star. Don’t start now. Be special, be right, be small.

THE MECHANICAL

Know what everyone’s doing, and where, and why, including the ones that aren’t in this scene.

Know why everyone says everything, including the narrator.

You found out what you were really getting at in draft 1 when you wrote its climax. Write draft 2 like it’s a joke: If you look at the plot backward, everything should hang from the punchline.

But since it’s a novel, what’s hanging on that nail should be a mobile.

If you’ve seen it before, cut it.