Drivetime

February 10

I rose rather early this morning and drove to Hayward.

I used to do a lot of long drives. During college I routinely drove down to Chapel Hill and Raleigh from Boone, and that was a 3-hour trip, one-way. When I worked at Lowe's, I had about a forty-minute commute each way. To go home to Dad's in G-boro took 5 hours, and going to visit Mom took 8 (though I don't think I ever did that in a straight shot). I like those long drives-- I think about stories when I drive. I listen to music while driving with more attention than I do at any other time. It's actually good that Timprov and Marissa live an hour away, because it gives me that driving time, time I can spend story-spinning without feeling like I should be doing anything else-- like paying bills, or reading, or researching, or actually producing fiction. And it's only an hour trip, which is so short that I don't even begin to get bored or annoyed.

I had a lovely time with them. We searched fruitlessly for a nice coffee shop-- found one place that closes at 11 a.m. every day! That's not much good to us. If any of y'all know of a nice coffee place in Hayward (not Starbucks!) drop me a line and let me know about it. Someplace with good light and seating. We had generifood at Chili's-- so-so meal, great conversation.

We went to the park, where I subjected them to a brief poetry reading-- Atwood's "February," "Asparagus," and "The Sad Child," all from Morning in the Burned House. I loaned Marissa a bunch of Collins and Atwood on the condition that I got to read a few poems out loud.

The park got cold, so we went back to the house, where we basically chilled and chatted about various things. Marissa made a yummy chicken parmesan meal, along with salad and good bread and a tasty white wine. I'm usually pretty indifferent to white wine (aside from the divine Australian Chardonnay I had at Pearl Alley in October), but this wine was good-- maybe a touch sweeter than I'd like, but tasty.

Timprov gave me the font for my new Tropism header-- it appears to be the same font used in The Maxx. I like it. Not exactly sfnal, but definitely dark-fantastical.

Well. Except that I made it blue.

Oh, yeah, writing-- no, I didn't do any, at least no straight-out fiction. On the drive home I thought about the Bicycle story and figured out how it progresses and resolves, and mostly laid out the scenes in my head. I went to Pergolesi and made more formal notes. I think it'll be a good story, and I think I came up with some nice solutions to some troubling bits. The plan for tomorrow is to write like a dervish whirls. We'll see how it turns out.

Total Word Count: 13,500

Today's Word Count: 0

The Daring Darlings:

Jim C. Hines

Hilary Moon Murphy

Nicole Montgomery

Melanie Miller Fletcher

Karina Summer Smith

Anne Hutchins