If It's Not One Thing....

The completed memoir, as regular readers of The Pariah's Syntax know, was expected by late January. Call it first-book naïveté, but I really did believe I could make it what it needs to be with just two rewrites. Now, here is April, giggling and taunting me with her rush of springtime warmth. Truly the cruelest month, she asks, "Wasn't it about this warm outside when you started that project?"

Salt in the wound. The fact is, I've been hamstrung. Mere days from saturating the last page of draft number two with red ink, a precipice of accomplishment at which I was downright giddy, my typewriter — Old Faithful, my dogged workhorse of five years — went kaput. My first reaction was to curse mightily (I do that, from time to time), then I looked into repair costs. I cursed some more. An entirely new carriage assembly was needed which, as a reference point for those of you living comfortably in the twenty-first century, is like your inkjet's print head grinding to a halt. Only more expensive — insanely so, because no one in his right mind repairs typewriters in this day and age. Crazy old druids charge a lot for labor; however, the bill must be paid. I cannot hand-write my many shorter journal submissions any more than I can my book manuscript.

So now I wait. Friends tell me to make the most of the downtime. One suggested I "get some reading done."

"Take a vay-cay," prompted another.

"Go out for some fresh air," yet another insisted.

Someone else, trying to brighten my spirits, said, "Just think how motivated you'll be to work when you get it back from the shop!"

As if motivation weren't something I had enough of to bottle and sell at a premium. How I laughed when I heard these palliatives, so smilingly delivered. I laughed until I was worn out, then contemplated a nap. Too bad I was too dejected to sleep.