Drafted

A bit quixotically, I made a New Year's resolution at the Hogmanay ball last year:

Just around midnight, during the "Hip hip...HOORAY!" bit that comes after singing Auld Lang Syne, I impulsively made one additional resolution. It sort of rang in my skull as an echo or resonance of the shouted hoorays, surging on and amplified by that wave of sound: to finish the first draft of The Slow Palace this year.

I say quixotically because, before I even knew how much time I would lose this year to wedding planning and political addiction and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I knew I didn't have a good track record with knuckling down, slogging, nosing the grindstone. I am easily distractable, I am lazy, I am adept at stringing along the wasting of time, second to inconsequential second, until I've crocheted a mighty chain of hours.

Nevertheless.

489 pages, 31 chapters, 138,000 words (from "Sometimes" to "Quickly"): The Slow Palace is a book.

I've been writing this draft since November 11, 2006. 772 days later, it goes into a (metaphorical) drawer for a few weeks (how many?), and I'm not allowed to look at it, no I am not, so I can view it with fresh eyes when I pull it out for the revision. I hope a lot of those words get trimmed by future-me — God knows I don't want it getting longer. In the interim, the plan is to write and submit one or two short stories. (I know how one of them starts. And the other one is called Mistigris.) And this year's resolution gets to be "Send the finished book out in 2009."

It's funny. I've been expecting this for a month at least, planning to finish this weekend, but it still caught me by surprise. A few days ago, I was on an escalator in Davis Square that suddenly stopped — this is like that. It's over? Can it do that?

My body hates me

Broke a tooth tonight while eating tasty tasty tacos carnitas at Chipotlé. I didn't notice at the time, but there is now a jagged metal spike where the corner of my top right molar used to be. (The tooth cracked away from a filling.) My tongue doesn't like it, but it can't stop investigating. It's like a dog with a Roomba. Now I get to spend tomorrow afternoon finding a dentist with time to do a little emergency repair, assuming I work out what sort of insurance information I have.

On the plus side, I grabbed one of the viral-marketty Coraline keys from the top of the escalator in Harvard Square. Nice metallic heft; an attractive Thing. I'd seen them in Oak (a shop on Gloucester, just off Newbury) on Sunday, and, not knowing what they were, thought they were art objects for sale. [Edit: If anyone sees them and would like to grab an extra, it would be appreciated. I have a friend who'd like a key, and I foolishly took only one.]

(No, I was not gnawing on the key when my tooth broke.)