Allowing myself to hope

The last couple of days have been very productive, and I’m now just a hair shy of 20,000 words for the month. Given that tomorrow’s the 15th, that means I’m only about 3300 words off the NaNoWriMo pace. Another couple of days like these and I could be back on track. I keep telling myself I’m not all that worried about making the NaNoWriMo goal, but I’m just kidding myself. I hate missing deadlines or goals. Hate it!

I have a Storytellers essay due on Friday, though, which might knock me off stride again. I have the rambling framework of an essay for the slot that I started this weekend, but I’m not sure what the point is, and I’m not convinced that I’m headed in the right direction with it. Or, if indeed I’m headed in any direction with it. I’ll have to read it over again tomorrow to see if it’s salvageable or if I have to go back to square one and come up with something else.

I received a copy of Joseph Wambaugh’s new novel from the publisher last night. Another book I can’t wait to start. The queue keeps getting bigger. There’s the stack of books that I want to get around to, but there’s also the more demanding stack of ones I can’t wait to read.

I read King’s new short story “Willa” (Playboy, December ’06 issue) last night. I already had a pretty good idea of where the story was headed based on comments I’d heard from when he premiered it at a reading early this year, but I thought the execution was exquisite. I kept seeing it being acted out like a short stage play. I envisioned stark staging, a split screen, perhaps, with half being the train station and the other half being the blues joint in town. Haven’t yet quite figured out how the stage effects would be handled—and there’s that pesky wolf to deal with—but I think it would make for a nifty play. It has that existential thing going for it.