Well, dear readers, I think I’ve eaten enough tuna pasta salad over the past two weeks to last me the entire year. I am, in other words, tuna pastad out. I am topped off. I can eat no more tuna pasta salad. Yesterday alone I ate so much tuna pasta salad that I began to dance to the music of the Ocarina whilst singing The Continental and thinking about the Carioca. I ate so much tuna pasta salad that at five-minute intervals I asked the eternal question: What is it, fish? However, I don’t want you to think that’s ALL I ate. No, I also ate some caramel/peanut popcorn from Dollar Tree, I had some Werther’s caramels, and a chocolate biscotti. If this paragraph alone doesn’t make you want to vomit on the ground, nothing will. But I tend to eat this way when I’m writing a new book. But starting today I shan’t eat so stupidly anymore. I must get back to my dieting ways immediately.
Yesterday, I ate a LOT of tuna pasta salad. I got eight hours of sleep, was up at ten, and at ten-thirty I began futzing and finessing the previous day’s writing. I added a few things, smoothed out other things, and it seemed pretty good to me. I then wrote two new pages but the Tree People arrived and then it was too damn noisy to do anything. What I did do was some research I needed to do about some items that a character has to choose in the book. That actually took quite some time. Then the helper came by and picked up some invoices.
I finally was able to return to writing when the Tree People finished. I wrote another four pages, incorporating the research I’d done, and that was fun. Then I picked up some packages and came right back home. I then took a brief viewing break and watched some not great short documentary (less than an hour – I think it was some English series, not a one-off) about what they call “revenge porn.” I knew nothing of this phenomenon and I was probably better off not knowing. It was on the Flix of Net. Basically, there are websites where disgruntled boyfriends (it’s never the other way around), post compromising photos of their exes, along with rude comments, that then get more rude comments from Internet idiots who hide behind their computers. Not only that, they also hack into people’s computers and get compromising photos that the user might have stored. It’s disgusting but sadly typical of the world in which we live. This all started – where else – in Los Angeles. The guy who was doing it here was eventually arrested and jailed, but there are still sites all over and they’re not hard to find. The solution, it would seem, to stop these creeps would be to stop taking stupid photos, nude, sexual, or anything you think might embarrass you if posted publicly. If you’re a young woman or older woman and you’re asked to text or e-mail naked photos, don’t. Why does anyone need them? And it can come to no good if you break up. Then again, I have a friend who told me some cretin she dated a couple of times has texted her photos of his private parts. I mean, is that not the height of chutzpah and ego – and believe me, she told me it was not that interesting. People. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live with ‘em.
Then I went back to writing and wrote an additional four pages, then took a shower and then finished the first chapter, perhaps the longest first chapter I’ve ever written at thirty-two manuscript pages, and then I wrote the first two paragraphs of the second chapter. I’m having fun writing this yarn and I’m in a really fun section now, but at some point in the next couple of chapters I do have to figure out the actual story – I have the bones of the plot, but the actual story, as in the Kritzer books, will, at some point, present itself to me. In all, I did eleven pages.
After that, I listened to some Khatchaturian, some John Barry, and another wonderful Dello Joio piece, a clarinet concerto I’d never heard. I began nuking a lot more tracks so that iTunes doesn’t get overloaded.
Today, I shall try to at least do ten more pages, after I futz and finesse yesterday’s writing. I will not be eating any tuna pasta salad and will probably try to eat very lightly. I shall hopefully pick up some packages, but mostly it will be an all writing day, although I do have to make a show order and I still haven’t gotten everyone their music, which is also a must as we’re just a month away from the February show now.
Tomorrow I think I may be having a meal with someone, can’t remember, but hopefully they’ll remind me if that is indeed the case. Friday I’m definitely having a lunch meeting, and the weekend is pretty open save for more writing. I’ll also be giving Muse Margaret however many pages are done by Sunday or maybe even Saturday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, do a show order, get everyone their music, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after having been the man who ate too much tuna pasta salad.