In the Cold Mid-Winter

Can't believe it's been a month since I wrote last. The month of January just kind of got away from me. I'd like to say I've spent all that time being productive, but the first half of the month was a bust. I got a headache on New Year's for no apparent reason and it didn't leave my head alone until the twentieth of January. I went to a doctor, but he says to live with it. I figure that's better than the alternative.

Meanwhile--I don't know if you've ever had a headache that lasts for twenty-one days or not, but--I wasn't able to do much of anything. No writing, no reading, no exercise (good thing I didn't make any resolutions, well, not really), and very little but lying around waiting for my life to start.

But it's gone now, and life is slowly getting back to normal. I started work on another novel, which means I'm now working on three novels at once. I have one called "Finton Moon" that won the Percy Janes award a few years ago and it got rejected by two publishers (that's really not very many) and three agents (still not very many). But all of them were extremely ethusiastic about the premise of the novel and the quality of the writing. They'd read the first forty pages and go "wow! send me the rest immediately!" It happened like that each time. But then a funny thing happened. They read the whole novel and, though they kind of liked it, they didn't "love" it. Anyway, I knew what I needed to do with it, but never really had the time to do it before. And before I go back to teaching next fall, this is the number one project I'd like to have done. So I'm working on that now, while the other two take my attention once in a while as well. "Finton Moon" is one of those novels that have the potential to really make a splash in the literary world, whereas my other works are just "smaller"--not so much potential for anything big, though I hope they're decent reads.

Besides writing novels, I have to start work on my play for "Break, Break, Break" soon. It ought to be done before spring, I would think. Funny, but when I first agreed to do it it seemed like I had all the time in the world. But suddenly it's 2008, and the play will probably be happening on stage exactly a year from now. That's really not that much time, considering all the work that has to be done with production and acting, etc. between now and then.

I'm also working on a couple of new short stories, hoping to get them done soon. Beyond that, I'm back playing badminton a couple of times a week. Most people think of badminton as a sort of backyard, leisurely game like croquet, with people standing around with drinks and parasols, casually batting the birdie over the net in a genteel fashion. But for me, badminton is an all-out, no holds barred bloodsport. I don't care about winning so much as just trying my absolute best on every shot. Kind of like life, I suppose. Nothing's really THAT important, when you think about it, but it is what you make of it. I choose to make every shot count. Then I go running around Field House track for a couple of miles before calling it quits. I find it helps me think better if I feel better physically, plus I just love to move as fast as possible and work up a sweat.

Then when I come home, my writing tends to go even better.

Speaking of which, I must get back to work. Time's a wastin'.