This is why I don’t go on vacation …

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So I’ve been offline since last Wednesday when I boarded a train to Minneapolis. Therefore I missed The Gweat LJ Dwama. It’ll take me days to catch up so the salient details will have to wait until I return.

And lo, there was great rejoicing

Granted there will be people mildly miffed that I didn’t tell them I was here ( here being not Detroit, and as of right now until I board my train back Monday morning, I will probably continue to sit at a rather stylish breakfast table covered in notebooks, screenplay notes and a full ashtray and be repeatedly subjected to a manic cat and Neil Diamond), and there’s good reason for that: we simply had too much to do.

Writing by committee is intensive and I can tell you we went several hours without speaking, not because there was a disagreement (OH NOES 1!!!111!!! – teh dwama), but because we’re generally not chatty people, and we work pretty hard at the writing thing. I write faster in longhand, and I’ve got a lot to transcribe before tonight, and we’d really like to get through maybe several more chapters. There’s a chance that sleeping gets to be something I do between Minneapolis and Chicago. (If someone wants to start the rumor that we’re fighting and it’s stalling the creative process and they have to bring in ghostwriters to finish before the deadline, go nuts – people dig controversy)

Seriously, we could have a first draft sooner than we all expected. This is a good thing.

Living like cats among men

You can do this when you’re relatively young. Write all night, sleep until early afternoon, scrounge for breakfast, nap, and the set to more writing. We are still relatively young. I can’t vouch for RJ’s sleep patterns, but I’ve gotten rather used to going to bed when the dawn breaks. Multiple naps – cats are on to something.

The next obvious question is, are we posting excerpts? Short answer: yes. Long answer: no, with a but. In time, yes, just not right away. I can think of one reader who will drive to my house and camp in my front yard until she gets something, but for everyone else – it’s under advisement. Why would you buy the cow when you can stick your hand through the fence, grab a teat, and and squeeze the raw milk into a glass? You know who you are.

Time for breakfast. I hear it’s pizza.