MR. MAGOO
My wife likes to call me Mr. Magoo. Calene claims I wander through life in a state of mild befuddlement, flirting with calamity without knowing. I blame it on the way I arrange my days, traveling from one obsession to another: predawn dreams about the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, straight out of bed to sunrise practice with my runners, then an hour with my novel before putting playtime away and turning my focus to historical research and writing.
BOOK WRITING 101
Had a nice zoom with my editor this morning. Second Pass for Taking London is coming my way on Thursday, which is the last time I'll see the words before it gets sent to the printer, there to be bound and shipped to the four corners of the earth. I'll read it one more time, hoping there are no completely awful sentences. It's a year this week since I began writing it, but the research went on for a while before that…
NOVEMBER
TOSS AND TURN
Sitting in the cancer ward while Calene gets a PET scan. Not a bad place to write, all things considered — plush chairs, quiet, so-so WiFi. So far this morning I've checked and rechecked stats from Friday's cross country meet, cancelled a trip to London, read the LA Times, and checked my American Express balance. I didn't sleep well last night, doing the 3 am wake-up and not falling back to sleep. Sometimes when this happens and I struggle to find a comfortable sleeping position I remind myself that this is where "toss and turn" comes from.
AMAZON
When you write your book, as I believe we all should do in this life, if only for our grandchildren, you will be tempted to read your Amazon reviews. It's inevitable. Writing is a needy act, as storytelling has been since the beginning of the craft. Way back when tribes sat around a campfire to share their vignettes in the most dramatic fashion possible, you told your story to get a laugh, a tear, a knowing glance. Nowadays, we call that an Amazon five-star review.
HOMECOMING
"You'll never make it."
We were sitting on a taxiway at O'Hare. The guy next to me was a chatty hedge fund manager. Started talking the minute he sat down. In no time at all I had the ear buds in and pulled out my book.
But that was an hour ago in Traverse City. Now, knowing that my connecting flight home was boarding and I needed to hustle from the far end of the F terminal to the far end of the C terminal, I was in go mode. . . .
