This Is Not Our Usual Pace
I figure the only way to do this authentically
is to do it like this: Lola’s in my lap, one hand shoved
up my t-shirt sleeve, her fist full of my armpit hair, and
she’s the one shrieking while she pulls with all her
five-month-old might. I’m typing one-handed—and
my eyes are watering from the pain. She was born at
the very end of December, and since then I’ve written
one two-page story. Listen, I’m not complaining:
quite the opposite. I love my daughter, I love her like
crazy—even when she’s tearing my armpit hair out
at its roots. My wife and I are fortunate enough to
reached a point in our lives where we have jobs that for the
last five months have required of us only two days of on-site
work a week, and during those months we’ve traded off
taking care of the baby, each of us on duty when the other
is off at work. I’ve had time to one-hand the
aforementioned two-page story with Lola in my lap, and my
wife has written one poem, also managed one-handed with the
baby in the lap. This is not our usual pace.
An update: Lola has now released my armpit hair, though she’s
keeping her hand up my sleeve—just in case—while
she calmly sucks her fist.
I wrote my novel Yellow Jack over two years of desk-job
lunch hours, so I know how to plan: I finished a novel in
late August, 2005, started roughing-out a new book in early
September, got an “outline” done near the time
I celebrated my thirty-seventh birthday on 28 November 2005,
and then put that outline in a file folder/time capsule labeled
DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 15 MAY 2006. By the time you read
this I will be—knock wood—hard at work.
An update: Lola is asleep.
