Today I have been less than productive … indeed if there was a minus scale of lack of productivity, I would appear on it. I would get a gold star and a koala stamp for laziness.
It’s been disgustingly hot here in Brisneyland, so a lot of the day has been spent on the back deck watching the greenies (those are birds, not activists) play in the jacaranda tree … re-reading chunks of John Connolly’s The Lovers (I love Connolly, he provides page-turners with great pace and humour as well as creepy apocrypha-inflected plots) … drinking red wine (after 3pm), then watching The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror with King Snorky in it (who doesn’t find homicidal dolphins adorable?) … and, well, napping.
But, the day has not been entirely wasted: there has been much percolation. I’ve finished, for all intents and purposes, the short story collection Sourdough and Other Stories, and am just waiting for feedback from my beta- readers on that. I feel like it’s a finished project, just waiting for the last tidying touches. And I’ve been back-braining a new novel – which will be written in about a year or so – it’s a mix of Beowulf with the saga of Glam and Grettis … I’ve been scribbling notes on my favourite thing – the cocktail napkin – and thinking and dreaming about the story. And I’ve been thinking about the re-write on Well of Souls for next year.
And I have also been thinking and scribbling about Narrow Daylight, which is my PhD novel, and is what I am finishing over the Christmas break. So, while there has not been much physical movement, the brain has been working – ‘That there can be action in that which is actionless, few can understand.’ That maybe Lao Tzu … or not … but anyway, I have been actioning the actionless … or something.
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