Assorted Nonsense

Just when I was nearing completion, I’m forced to stop…!

I hit page 180 today of the final draft of A Time and a Place.  Yes, I should be further along than that but Christmas came along and with it the usual complement of gluttony and sloth.  Holidays never fail to blow ginormous holes in my writing schedule, holes that make the one in the ozone layer look like a mere pockmark on Brad Pitt’s forehead.

The novel is divided up into four parts, and page 180 marks the end of part two.  Poor Barnabus J. Wildebear isn’t faring so well.  Our hapless hero will require much of parts three and four to get his act together and save his nephew — if he can.  Fortunately for both of us, parts three and four will be slighter shorter than parts one and two. 

Those of you less mathmatically challenged than the artsy writing this will have discerned that I’m officially well past the half way point in this, the final draft of A Time and A Place.  I was tempted to ask for some dedicated readers at this point so that they could completely discourage me with their devastating criticism of what (let’s face it) is more than likely a pile of complete rubbish, absolute rot, a waste of both my time and theirs, but I chickened out.  Maybe later…

…once the manuscript has been languishing in the bottom of a trunk for seventeen or so years, after having been rejected by every reputable and disreputable publisher on seven or eight continents, and shortly before my recovery from a hellish descent into alcoholism (marked by a disturbing obsession with small gibbon monkeys).

I hit page 170 of my novel-in-progess (working title ”A Time and a Place”) today.  That’s 170 final draft pages.  It’s going to come in at about 340 pages so I’m halfway through the puppy.  I do have it written all the way to the end; this is essentially the final draft that I’m writing.  It’s still time consuming though, painstakingly so, especially considering I’m tackling it about 35 minutes at a time twice a day five days a week, on the Go Train.  I do the odd bit at home, but it’s difficult to find the time there considering our hectic family schedule.

If I manage a page a day for the next 170 days I’ll finish it in just over half a year.  But it’s pretty rare that I finish an entire page a day.  Usually I manage a paragraph or two.  So I’m probably looking at at least another year on this.  Fortunately I love working on it.

A friend suggested that maybe I don’t want to finish it, and that’s why it’s taking so long.  I can assure everyone that is not the case! I desperately want to finish it.  But I want to finish it properly.  And it just takes a long time to do that.  Can I even be certain that it will be good (let alone work) once I’m done?  Sadly, I can’t.  I like it so far, but that’s far from a guarantee that anyone else will.  However, I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that ultimately I’m writing this novel for myself.  If anyone else likes it (let alone purchases it), that will be gravy.

One reason I desperately want to finish it is because I already have a sequel in mind.  In fact, I have it all mapped out.  The first portion of the sequel was broadcast on CBC Radio in 2002 on Faster Than Light… a little radio play called Captain’s Away.  I proposed it as a series but I expect I proposed it to the wrong person.  Alas, it was never picked up.  So I’d really like to do it up as a novel.

Here’s a snippet of some final draft “A Time and a Place” just to whet your appetite… um… or convince you not to bother with it.  (Here’s hoping for the former):

XI 

      It was awful – the light too bright and the sounds too loud.  I cried out and curled up into a ball to protect myself.

      “Wildebear!  Can you hear me?  What’s the matter with him?”

      “He’s not used to it.”

      “Will he be all right?”

      “He should.”

      “Should?”

      “He might not.”

      “Will he or won’t he?”

      “That’s what you’re here for, doctor.  To see that he’s okay.”

      “Hmph.  What happened to him?”

      “Not much.  Plenty.”

      “That’s an infuriating thing to say.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Don’t be sorry – just don’t say anything like that ever again.”

      “I can’t promise that I’ll” –

       “Okay okay, just — where was he, anyway?”

      “Where he needed to be.”

      “Oh for crying out – Wildebear!  Wildebear, it’s me, Humphrey.”

      I peeked out from between my arms to see who was talking.  Humphrey – the name sounded familiar.  He had a lot of meat on him, this Humphrey.  He’d make a sumptuous meal.  And I just happened to be starving.  Although a part of me knew that there was something very wrong with the idea, I unfurled myself in anticipation of a feast.  Catching a glimpse of one of my front paws, I was shocked to discover that it was almost completely hairless.  My God!  Was I ill?  I emitted a most un-T’Klee like whimper and curled back up.

      “Physiologically he’s all over the map,” a voice said.  “His pulse is racing and his serotonin levels are dangerously low.”

      It had come from my front foreleg.  Something shiny and gold was attached to me.  I tried to lick it off.

      The creature Humphrey leaned down to touch me.  Instantly I whirled on it, but something was the matter with my reflexes.  Before I could deliver the coup de grace the Humphrey creature grabbed hold of me and held fast.  I found myself in the embarrassing position of having been captured by my own prey.  It was like having been bested by a bandaloot.  I hoped that none of my brothers were around to see. 

      Except that… I had no brothers.  It was Cat’s brothers I was thinking of. 

      And I was not Cat.

      Was I?

      “Damn it Wildebear, what were you trying to do?  Slit my throat?”

      Humphrey.  Humphrey!  It was my old friend Doctor Peter Humphrey – and I had been about to eat him!  What had I been thinking?  Awfully confused, flitting back and forth between two identities, one human, the other a cat, I could not have said with any degree of certainty who or what I was just then.

      “You should think about cutting your nails once in a while,” Humphrey muttered.

      A thin red line had emerged on the side of Humphrey’s neck.  My attempt to dispatch him had come altogether too close for comfort. I started to apologize, but couldn’t seem to get the words out — talking involved using whiskers I no longer possessed.

      Humphrey let go and stepped back.  I desperately tried to pull myself together.  I had no fur, no whiskers; I was, therefore, not a cat.  I was a human.  And humans spoke with their –

      “Humphrey!  I – I’m so sorry.  It’s – it’s good to see you alive!”

      He touched a finger to his neck.  The tip came away red.  “Little thanks to you.”

      I rose to my feet and took in my surroundings.  We were in a small room blanketed in luxurious pillows and blankets.  Frills, tassels, reds and purples abounded.  The furnishings would not have been out of place in a Sultan’s tent… or that of a T’Klee.  Humphrey and I were not the only ones in the room, I saw.  Iugurtha was there as well. 

      I began backing slowly away.

      “You’re scaring him,” Humphrey told her.

      “It’s not me he should be afraid of,” she said.

      And with that everything fell into place.  Suddenly I knew precisely who I was, where I was, and what I had just been through.  It seemed incredible, but I had just spent several days, possibly weeks, living inside the mind of an alien cat.  I had witnessed the subjugation of a people I had come to love by a race of horrible monsters.  After an experience like that it was a wonder I was anything resembling sane.

      “Wildebear.”

      “Yes, doctor.”

      “You’re licking the backs of your hands.”

      “Ah.”  I stopped and considered.  “So I am.”  Then, because there really was no better way to relieve stress, I resumed licking in earnest.  “Please don’t ever throw me through the gate again,” I told Iugurtha in between licks.

      “Once should suffice,” she said.  “What is your opinion, Doctor?  Is he in good health?”

      “Nothing a little bed rest and years of psychotherapy won’t fix,” Humphrey replied.

      Mention of rest made me realize how exhausted I felt.  I excused myself, curled atop several of the fluffiest pillows I could find, and purred myself to sleep in a matter of seconds.