Monday, March 31, 2003
The cold air came last night, as predicted. I forgot to bring the jade plant and shamrocks in off the back porch, but both seem fine this morning. Hardier plants than me, I guess. Outside all is bright and green and you'd think it a glorious spring day, if the temperature wasn't hovering somewhere in the thirties.
I spent about four and a half hours yesterday afternoon getting a package ready to go in the mail to Penguin today. The prologue and first three chapters of Murder of Angels, along with the lie. It's a very short lie, at least. The finished bit of the ms. is about 140 pp., approximately 34,607 words of text. Hopefully, my editor will like what she sees.
And today is the last day of March.
Why the hell did I bother leaving Birmingham? In the past nine days, I've left the apartment once. All that seems to matter is this room with my laptop and my books and files and endless, circling thoughts. This is where I am, regardless of that room's geographic location. I moved it from Birmingham to Athens, from Athens to Birmingham, from Birmingham to Atlanta, from Atlanta back to Birmingham, and finally, from Birmingham once more to Atlanta. And it is still the same room. All the same ghosts are here. All the same anxieties and dreads. The word coffin, word womb, word labyrinth. Move it around and around (keep your eyes on the door, now) and everything stays the same. Neat trick. I should take it on the road, only that would entail leaving the apartment. And I'm not that desperate, yet.
This book, this new book, Murder of Angels- I need it to be something more, and I have no idea if there's something more in me. I mean, it needs more dimension, greater depth. It needs to be whole and entire. It needs to do all the things that Silk didn't do, because I was to young, too inexperienced at this, too uncertain of my voice, to go there. To take it there. I need this novel to fill in the space that Silk occupies now. I need it to supplant that novel, to rewrite that part of my - what? - my mythos? Gods, that poor word's been abused until it's all but meaningless. But I mean that portion of my fictional landscape, mindscape, dreamscape. I need it to find the heart of the matter and speak it in words so clear that no one can ever mistake my meaning and need more or less than what I've put on the pages.
I may as well wish for wings.
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