Backblog

So I'm a little behind.


Which is both an accurate description of my circumstances and of my personality.

Let's look at my goals for the past three weeks.

1. Sleeping.

I have no idea how I'm doing on this, but I'm not doing a great job. I was busy. And I got sick. And there was one night last week where I didn't sleep at all. My guess is I'm still hovering around 25% to 33%. I might have to do some tinkering to get this going in ernest (misspelling intentional out of deference to James Varney, R.I.P.)

2. Reading.

I'm crushing it. Since last reporting I have read, chronologically: Truman, The Wednesday Wars, Change Anything: The New Science to Personal Success, and The Back of the North Wind.

Truman was a masterpiece. Heartbreakingly good. McCullough shifted seamlessly from the intimate and personal to broader global and historical context, and the compelling nature of the story was never lost.


The book has crystal clear, incredible detail, but never seems to get bogged down. The prose is largely without fault--a real accomplishment for a 1,000 page biography--but more impressive still is the great mental effort that went into collecting, sorting, refining, and arranging the pieces.

It's a tapestry of thousands and thousands of threads, laid out and arranged to near perfection.

I seldom gush. Even when people ask me about my favorite books, I will typically address the one or two flaws I found. Not here. I was overwhelmed by the accomplishment, and I can't say anything otherwise.

3. Writing.

I think in the past few weeks I netted two or three pages. Not stellar. In addition to the novel I've been working on, I started a short story about a conversation between a lark and a Catholic priest.

I'm pretty sure Hollywood will want to make the lark/priest story into a full-length motion picture because I've chosen a premise with such universal appeal.

Makes sense.