King Hellry

Who would think that procrastination would be so hard and exhausting?

Jack keeps getting pushed aside to make way for the homework that I'm not doing. I'm only 9 days away from Los Angeles again, and I'm hoping to double or even triple my page count in the three wees worth of laziness I'm allowing myself. I've got a pretty good idea of the structure, now it's just a matter of making the time to implement the insanity.

My friend, Lane, sent me a copy of his novel, King Hellry, to read over and edit for him. He's finished the first draft and maybe a couple of light read-throughs and the thing just died on him. It makes me jealous to see that he actually has a novel done. And it makes me want to do work, so that I can have something to toss his way in return. His writing style is concise, direct, and doesn't wallow in trying to give you too much description. A bathroom is a bathroom. You know that. You know what a bathroom looks like. You fill in the rest of th blanks, and redefine your sight as he lets more and more details slip out slowly like a leaky faucet. I like that. It makes my Jack novel seem just ridiculous and weighted in its desire for you to know how everything is set up. It just feels slow in comparison.

I'm about 40 pages into his novel. It's about 260 pages. I'm hoping to finish it by Friday.

I'm nearing the end of chapter 4 and I'm hoping to finish chapter 5 by Friday. Part of me thinks that's a lie, considering how swamped I am, or am pretending to be, or am letting myself become (it's all a little fuzzy when I try and figure out where the system is breaking down).