Last weekend was long and exciting. One of those journey of discovery weekends where I hit upon life changing revelations such as: \u201cI\u2019m not able to stay up till 5am three nights in a row and drink two bottles of scotch each day.\u201d
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The weekend began on Wednesday night. I cleared the decks for four days of publisher duties surrounding a huge book launch gala on Friday night. (I really wanted to write \u201cpublishorial duties,\u201d by the way, but I live in fear that nobody gets me and there\u2019ll be a dozen comments from the horde of shut-ins who can\u2019t stand my writing and yet refresh this page 700 times a day.)<\/p>\n
As we built up to the launch, and the wave slowly rolled back over the weekend, I emerged a new man. A new man who is unable to stomach scotch. And the greatest self-discovery of all was that I can only write if I\u2019m under intense pressure.<\/p>\n
Deep into Thursday night, as the clocks ticked over into those early AM hours and the house rocked with yelling writers, drunken poets, and well-armed publishers shooting at imaginary nests of Brown Recluse spiders, we all realized that the first fuck up of the book launch was taking place.<\/p>\n
The venue hosting the launch had been kind enough to give us a week of coverage on their blog, and we pulled together all the posts without much trouble. Friday, though, had been reserved for the book trailer. I think we were approaching 2am on Thursday when it dawned on me that the trailer wasn\u2019t ready and we had to quickly throw together a Friday post.<\/p>\n
My publishorial employers threw a pad of paper and a pen at me, then held a pistol to my head and started hissing terrifying threats in some sort of weird pigeon Spanish. What came out was a sort of stream-of-consciousness that had no business appearing on a grown up blog.<\/p>\n
But I liked it, and I drunkenly drove home through alleyways and back yards as it dawned on me \u2013 I can only write under pressure. I need some sort of impossible, ridiculous goal. Like the 12,000 words a month project<\/a>. I had thought a \u201cgentleman\u2019s competition\u201d like Two Novels and a Baby <\/a>was the logical next step, but it wasn\u2019t. I needed to do something like Two Novels during a Sinus Infection.<\/p>\n As the weekend wore on, one of our VIP writer guests (authorial is a word!) suggested that I put together a book of vignettes, as I mentioned in yesterday\u2019s post<\/a>. And, appropriately enough, everything came to me while in the middle of devouring a plate of nachos. Short, ranty vignettes. How Greatsociety.org of me. Nachorial, even.<\/p>\n And with the protective mask of Greatsociety (where I really can publish anything without using a spell checker or, you know, my brains), I\u2019ll create an insane and impossible to maintain deadline: Every Monday, I\u2019ll write a week\u2019s worth of articles. The length and topic won\u2019t matter. I\u2019ll just pound out whatever comes to mind and program it up.<\/p>\n That way, I can spend the rest of the week sitting in the dark and watching my neighbors without worrying about the hideous responsibilities of writing a novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last weekend was long and exciting. One of those journey of discovery weekends where I hit upon life changing revelations such as: \u201cI\u2019m not able to stay up till 5am three nights in a row and drink two bottles of …<\/p>\n