You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Taking a few months off.
For years, I didn’t miss a day. Every single day, I wrote and published a Life’s Crazy story. Some were great and some sucked and most were somewhere in between. But I wrote and wrote and wrote.
Then one day, I stopped.
I hit the brakes on the words. I stopped banging out the sentences. I left the paragraphs in my other suit pocket.
Bam. I simply went cold turkey.
It was like being a pack a day Marlboro Junkie and then simply saying, “someone give me a salami sandwich, please, because I ain’t writing none of those crazy ass words today.”
I’m talking about Life’s Crazy.
As some of you have noticed, I just stopped.
I stopped writing like a subway train hitting the side of a mountain.
KABLAM
SILENCE.
I stopped like a bullet fired out of a gun into a chunk of clay.
Thud!
It just ceased to be anything.
Or so it would seem.
While the daily output went from Category 4 to windless day, behind the scenes, on the back side of the Life’s Crazy spectrum, I was writing longer and harder than ever.
RAT A TAT TAT went the fingers on the keyboard.
I became a coal miner of words. I put on my hard hat with the little light and entered the dark cave of a novelist.
I began pecking away, day after day, after day. I wrote on weekends, and at night. I woke up early and I wrote between live shots at work. I simply churned out the pages like so much literary sausage, stuffing the sheath of creativity till it was full and plump.
107,000 words and 417 pages later, I emerged from that Salami scented coal mine with something I hope is a diamond in the rough.
I call it Deadline.
It’s set in 1991. It’s a story of a young, impatient newsman who battles overbearing news directors and corrupt law enforcement in racially charged Eastern North Carolina.
Some of you know this story. Some of you know this time and place. Yes, this was a screenplay, first. But the story is essentially the same, but different, better. A screenplay is a lot like a news report. It is bound by time and has many limitations. But a novel? Ah, the novel. So much can be said. So many avenues can be explored. So many nuances can be shared. And share them I did.
I’ve done this many times in my life. Write and write and write and then throw it in a box. Well, I have yet to throw it in a box. I’m excited to market the possibilities see if anyone wants to go into the salami scented coal mine with me.
So while I wait to see if I have a winning lottery ticket, I have some blank white on the computer screen that may occasionally need to be filled.
As Jack Nicholson once said with a fire ax. “Honey, I’m Home!”
Life’s Crazy™