Tuesday morning. Huzzah! Yesterday actually turned out to be pretty good. After that initial sick feeling yesterday morning, I perked up once I ate and had some coffee and the rest of the day went beautifully. I had a great day at the day job, got everything caught up that I needed to get caught up, and so, overall, it was a great day at the office. Huzzah! I feel pretty good this morning, which is great. I slept really well, and feel rested this morning, which is all one can ask for after waking up to an alarm (I’ve never been a spring out of bed with the alarm person, as I would always rather not wake up). My COVID test yesterday morning was also negative, which was all kinds of awesome (I was worried when I didn’t feel great yesterday morning on rising). I picked up the mail on the way home, so tonight I can just come straight home after work and chill. I see blue skies out there through the branches of the crepe myrtles this morning, so probably no rain. We’re also in a heat advisory until at least seven p.m. last night.
I managed to work on the book some, so it’s not like the high-energy day I experienced at the office swirled its way down the toilet once I got home. The work went slowly, and I only managed somewhere between 300 and 500 words at best, but they were words and it was progress, so I will happily and gladly take it. My main character is slowly taking shape, as is the story, and I am adding characters to the story to flesh it out more. My New Orleans of 1994 is also taking shape in my head; the question is how accurate are my memories of the city in that year? I see some visits to the Historic New Orleans Collection are probably in order. I can’t remember, for example, what kind of store was in the building that is now Coquette at Magazine and Washington; was it hardware or paint? What was in the Starbucks building across the street from there? Where were the empty lots on Camp Street in those days? And above all else, cannot forget the Camp Street on-ramp to nowhere, which kind of looked like a modern art installation until it was torn down, and when was it torn down? When did the Coliseum Theater burn down? When did it close from showing films? (It’s the theater Brad Pitt walks out of after seeing Tequila Sunrise in the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, and when he walks out you can see the on-ramp in use, so that means it was disconnected from the highway system after the movie was filmed…) And what brand was the grocery store that was the Rouse’s on Tchoupitoulas back then? Was it a Schwegmann’s Super Center or was it a Sav-a-Center? It was both at some point, and there was also an A&P on Carrollton right after the intersection with St. Charles.
Today will be slightly easier than yesterday at the office, as I managed to get caught up on almost everything yesterday so today I have some administrative things to get done and see clients. The schedule didn’t look terribly busy when I left the office yesterday, so I should be able to get my other work done around clients. I am also trying to get my shit together still from the long years of survival-mode, and have got to make that damned to-do list. I also need to start outlining the book–what’s written, so I can easily look when I need to rather than having to reread every chapter to find something, or find out if I already said something or ensuring I am not being repetitious (which is always a problem with my manuscripts). I also figured out how to solve a problem with a story I’ve written and can’t seem to sell anywhere; the tone is wrong. I was trying to show the shift from acceptance to murderous anger in someone who is down on their luck, but it struck me last night that the shift doesn’t work, especially given what the story is about. That also means changing the opening line, which I thought was a winner, but it’s not…otherwise I would have sold the story by now. There’s a flaw I didn’t see until this past weekend, and so I have made notes in my journal and will get back to working on that story. I’ll pick a day to work on it and will shut off the novel for that one day at least. I know I am almost finished with the collection, and the revision of this story for the last time will bring the collection to almost completion. I’d like for it to be over ninety thousand words long, and I am right around eighty right now, so it needs two more stories, and I think I know what the other one will be already. Woo-hoo! Progress of a sort, any sort, is still progress.
I also got an idea for a short story to write for an anthology I’ve agreed to write a story for last night, too. It’s a Sherlock of 1916 New Orleans story, and the title I came up with, “The Adventure of the Voodoo Queen’s Necklace,” is a winner, I think. You know I’ve been trying to write a lengthy story around the destruction of Freniere in the 1915 Hurricane and Julia Brown; it occurred to me that I could set it in 1916 and write about her shortly after her death. “When I Die” is still a workable story, about desire curdling into hatred–and how that thin line between love and hate in our minds is so easily exploited by supernatural forces. Oooh, that sounds even better. Also, when I was getting home from work last night I noticed the construction on the last vacant lot on our block and it occurred to me how precisely I could write my “I hate the construction on our street” story, “Condos for Sale or Rent,” and made note of that last night as well. So…the spring of inspiration is certainly not running dry around here, I just need to force myself to actually do the writing, which…a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest, doesn’t he?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a delightful Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely be back later.
Queer and Loathing in America 