I’ve been cleaning the kitchen tonight — trying to get a head start on the weekend, really. My rationale has been that the more I do tonight, the more time I have to write this weekend.

It’s Saturday now and I’ve got a very clean kitchen. Yay. That’s two more hours that I can use tomorrow.

I also found the time to put another 2,000 words or so into the second draft. That puts me at about 58,000 words right now.

While I was cleaning tonight, I was listening to a podcast of the PRI show Studio 360 on ‘The Great Gatsby‘ and I was taken aback to hear one of the commentators mention that Fitzgerald came in around 50,000 words on the novel.

I’m probably going to hit 175,000 at the end. I might even end up at 200,000 if I decide to include The Big Conceit that I toyed with throughout the first draft.

You approach things naively as a first-time novelist: “I’m writing a book,” you tell yourself and anyone else foolish enough to slow down long enough to listen. You’re proud of the fact that you’ve moved out of the Poseur Reality (i.e. those people who talk about the great ideas they have, the things that they could write or are planning to write (which they will, of course, never write) and how much money they’ll make off of the movie rights*) and into a practical effort.

And then, miracle of miracles, you actually finish. You’re not just writing a book anymore. You’ve written one.

And then, staring at the stack of paper that represents your first draft, you start to realize — like a new husband hefting the weight of his bride for the first time as he staggers over the threshold — that you had no idea what you were getting into.

It’s seductive, the draw of the story. When I’m in the middle of something, it has a tendency to hover around in the back of my mind, staying on the periphery through almost every other activity.

No matter what I’m up to — work, church, kids, reading, watching TV, driving, sex, meetings, taking out the trash — like the vamp in old movies, it waves it’s stockinged leg around the edge of the curtain from time to time, luring me in.

It’s worse once the thing is actually written and done. Then there’s nothing but the day-to-day guilt and shame of not working on it, making it better, making it work.

After you marry the vamp, you find that hand washing all those silk stockings can take up a lot of your free time. And if the routine takes the edge off of the thrill of how they feel between your fingers? Well, then God help you. That’s an entirely different circle in Dante’s inferno.

The story seduces you at first into writing it. Then it expects you to live up to the promises you lavished on it during the courtship. Where once it was your seduction, your addiction . . . now it’s become your drudgery, your ball and chain.

The secret is, once you get that story back under the covers, you find that the vamp hasn’t vanished. She’s been waiting for you all along. And she’s all yours now. Even in the dark, the glint of the ring on her finger is very bright.

And then, you get to work.

(No. No idea what this is all about. I am fairly certain it’s about writing. I suspect there’s some sex in there as well. Let’s face it, the two activities are not mutually exclusive. At least, I’d like to think that they’re not.)

It’s almost three in the morning. No idea how it got so late (or so early) but I’m going to go try and put some more time in with the vamp before I go to bed. Maybe I can get her to 60,000 words before my virility gives out.

(I’ve already written the 50,000 word novel, by the way. I wrote it years ago and no one but my old friend Jeff has read it. When I get done with my current project, I will probably dig it out and try to light a spark once more. I expect, somehow, that this is the writer equivalent of keeping your Little Black Book even though you’ve given up your bachelor ways. I could go on with this theme, but I am tired and it’s for bed-with-maybe-a-little-writing-first.)

(Even thinking about that other story while I’m working on this one makes me feel guilty.)

And on that note, good night.

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* Hey, I’d be happy with some action figures to put on my shelf.