Moose in the Kitchen

I just finished my first short story. My first finished work of fiction since I forged that note about a “cold” to get myself out of ninth grade Algebra. I pranced out of the kitchen to declare my mastery of the English language to anyone who would listen (the dog totally ignored me, by the way) and was asked, “So when are you sending it to The New Yorker?” Ha ha! No. The New Yorker does not take stories where the first three words are “In the beginning.” Really, they don’t. I know it’s hard to believe, but it seems to be a policy. But support, even unwarranted and possibly joking support, is good. I like support.

I have myself 8,000 words of horrifically horrific prose that I haven’t once re-read, much less fixed. I feel good about this. The only reason I know the first three words is because I had to scan up to the top to check the word count and save the document. Full understanding of just how poor your monkey’s grammar is will totally kill your momentum. Re-reading = devil. Even Hemingway said that all first drafts suck. (I may have paraphrased.) Who am I to argue with Hemingway? Except for that bit with the red pony. I was not a fan of the red pony. At least Mr. Ed had something to say for himself. [Edit: I'm a dork. The Red Pony was written by Steinbeck. Never mind.]

Unplanned side effect of fiction? Weight gain. I used to get up in the morning and exercise. By “exercise” I mean “do 15 minutes of activity only marginally more strenuous than breathing”. But still. It was something. Now that I’m writing 800 to 1,000 words before breakfast, I don’t really have time for the exercise. Or the breakfast, but that works against me, metabolically speaking. Slap that onto the pint of ice cream I consumed last night as I pondered my habit of considering torn curtains to be a perfectly valid plot point, and you have yourself a few extra pounds.

Speaking of which, I need to go find myself a nice celebratory breakfast sandwich.