PEJORATIVE

“Half a page, and the morning is already ancient.” – M.O.

And so it went, my triumphant return to a daily regiment of writing. After a long weekend, I set a goal for myself. Be done with this sample chapter by Friday. I would spend Wednesday writing the introduction to Bear Claw, Thursday writing the introduction to Shipping News/June of ’44/Rodan, and Friday writing the introduction to Silkworm. Three or four hours a day in front of the computer, no breaks for anything. Just me and a bottle of water.

I started today just before 1:00pm, and by 1:54 I had exactly one sentence down on paper. While I had not started off on the right foot, I had successfully peeled the sticker off the back of a nail clipper, leaving little-to-no sticky residue behind. Quite frankly, I don’t even know why I reached for the damn thing, my fingernails are all bloody and bitten to hell anyway. I guess I needed something to fidget with while I tried to figure out what kind of approach I was going to take. If you’re at all interested, I decided on the, “Fuck it, write what you feel and worry about editing it all later” approach. It was only a matter of time before the paragraphs began spilling out onto a Word Document. I even e-mailed Rich to ask a few questions so that I could bulk up my facts. It’s looking kind of interesting. It’s certainly not hack-music-journalist prose. It’s more in the vein of a-story-a-child-could-tell prose. Nevertheless, three hours or so after commencement, I completed the day’s goal.