2009 has been a tough one so far, mostly because I’ve been awake for too much of it. Despite moments of respite thanks to Paul McKenna’s hypnosis CD, insomnia continues to stir up my stress levels – or vice versa I suspect. Still, happiness arrived last week in the form of a phone call from my agent, saying she was really impressed with the new draft of my novel. A bit of work on a couple of chapters and another going over and she thinks it’ll be ready to go out to publishers in February/early March. This extremely exciting news caused me to ditch the short story I was attempting to write in the interim and settle in for a final edit. It really is just an edit at this stage. It’s incredible. A few weeks spent trying to work up material from scratch has made me realise just how far I’ve come with this book. I know it’s to be expected after three years spent on something, but the standard of writing, structuring and overall sunset voodoo is just so much better for those eternal re-drafts. I’ve spent so long with that story, I’ve forgotten now what it’s like to start with nothing. Maybe that’s why I haven’t even been able to write blog entries.
So this is my effort back in, as I sit at home on my new flexi-working arrangement, a 334 page manuscript heaped on a beanbag beside me and Bruce Springsteen helping the illusion that I’m on a road trip somewhere hot and open, not wedged into the corner of a worn-down futon with city traffic sludging past below. There are a lot of unknowns ahead. I want to enjoy it but monotony is filling up my stress bucket. My manager is going on maternity leave and it looks as if I may be stepping into her role, which will mean committing to full time office drudgery for the next year. I want to take the leap out of there but I’m just too sensible. Instead I’ll have to content myself with this passage from Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘The Rum Diary’:
“In the cab I leaned back and lit a small cigar I’d bought in the coffee shop. I was feeling better now, warm and sleepy and absolutely free. With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn’t felt since my first months in Europe – a mix of ignorance and a loose ‘what the hell’ kind of confidence that comes on a man when the wind picks up and he begins to move in a hard straight line towards and unknown horizon.”
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