Monday, May 17, 2004
Yesterday, I completed a spiral-bound notebook that I began sometime around June 1996. I do very little writing in longhand, so my notebooks last virtually forever. This one lasted almost seven years. The one before that, the one I used while writing Silk, only lasted me about four years. Looking back over the seven-year notebook last night, there's tons of notes about The Dreaming, Threshold, Low Red Moon, and Murder of Angels, lots and lots of short stories, to-do-lists for conventions, notes I made in cemeteries in New Orleans and Connecticut and Providence, hundreds of little monster doodles, all sorts of proofreading notes, and so forth. The front and back covers are plastered with stickers, and there are dozens of interior stickers, as well. I wouldn't part with this notebook for a million bucks. Okay. Well, maybe for a million. But, anyway, there's a photo of the front cover below:
I've carried this notebook with me to California, Washington, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, and England. I've had it at eight of my ten Dragon*Cons, as well as various World Horror and lesser cons. It survived Death's Little Sister. It has coffee stains. This notebook and I, we go back a ways. So, I have now retired it to a place on the same shelf where reside original typescripts of mss. and such. I figure this new notebook will last me until at least 2009.
I spent most of yesterday tidying up various loose ends, but I did manage to make some notes for "Alabaster," which I hope to begin today.
And, of course, today marks to beginning of legal gay marriages in Massachusetts. I hope George Bush chokes on it (of course, he'll only sputter, squint through those beady eyes, and quack about "the sanctity of marriage" and "family values," but one can always hope).
11:24 AM