Slackage

With a novel completed and an imminent circumnavigation of the globe looming, I have been feeling the need to overachieve in the department of underachievement.   Don't try this at home Kids, leave it to the professionals. 

So here's the beginning of a joke for which you can fill in your own punch line.  If there is a punch line.  "How can you tell when a writer is on vacation?"  Exactly. 

Underachieving at a professional level requires some basic tools.  I would say the first and most important tool of an aspiring underachiever is a good cafe'.  My cafe' is Loos American Bar in the Alt Stadt.  By the way, sitting in a cafe' while nursing an espresso and looking pensive is a long-standing Viennese tradition. 

When I'm not hanging around at Loos or sitting in the garden contemplating my navel, I occasionally get out for some meandering walks that I claim are explorations (not true!).  I try to get lost while looking for clever graffiti.  Sometimes I succeed at one, sometimes the other. 

If all else fails, I take my trusty mountain bike out into the Wienerwald and look for bugs.  Sorry, Insects.  Again, how can you tell when a writer is on vacation.  Tricky, that.

Once in awhile, I sit bolt upright in my chair and spilling cigar ash everywhere, looking as if I have been struck by the muse herself.  Then I scribble in my notebook or, worse, make an electronic note on my stupid smart phone.  People love that crap.  "Ah, the writer is working." As often as not I am writing "Lamb Curry - Saturday."

While I was working on the Serial-Z project, I felt able to ignore the blog or let The Rev take a swing at it, depending on my whim.  Now, however, the creeping tentacles of ego have nowhere to, um, creep to.  So it's back to the blog writing for now.  What has this to do with anything?  Well, not much.  I am just rambling.

Okay, okay, in practical terms it goes something like this:  Complete novel, check.   Sit on one's butt and do nothing, check.  Ah, but, there must be another step.  There is:  Find a literary agent who will then, hopefully, find a publisher.  The book is a minor sensation, everyone gets to take a big cut of the profits, the author gets a pittance and a modest advance on a second novel.  Great plan, yes?  What could possibly go wrong?

Then there's the flying around the globe thing.  I am not employing any hyperbole.  Next Tuesday it will be Vienna to Frankfurt to Seattle.  After a one-day hiatus from flying I'm off to Tucson to see the genetic envelope and then back to Fresno to meet friends.  Then back to Seattle.  The next leg is Seattle to Bangkok, where I will meet My Heart.  We will use every day of our allowed thirty days in Thailand, then fly home to Vienna.  Around the globe go I. 

So this is my last weekend in Vienna for a few months.  I have yet to come to terms with the idea of being back in the USA, but that is the stuff of another post.  As always, be well, be happy, live out loud, and Ciao for Now.