After finishing “Tiny Cancer,” I decided to be less ambitious with my follow-up effort.  It was going to be a quick something I was just going to rattle off in my spare time.  I figured I would have it done within a week or two.

I just started on it two days ago.

There were a number of reasons for this.  It was the holiday season.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend.  I have a job.  So on and so forth.

All of these are valid.  Unfortunately, there was also part of me that felt I deserved to rest on my laurels after completing a ten thousand-plus word story.  I had arrived as a real writer, you see, and needn’t concern myself with such mundane tasks as continuing to write.

I blissfully embraced this foolishness until Christmas day.  I was at Paula’s apartment, trying to help with dinner preparation but quickly finding out that I was of most use occasionally ferrying items out to the dining-room and mostly staying out of the way.  For the most part, my job was to amuse Paula by reading stories to her from my blog.  Naturally, I was in favor of that.  It beats honest work any day of the week.

As I recited my prose and took sips of wine to keep my voice from cracking, I started noticing passages that could use a little polish, some that needed more serious reworking, and others that just plain sucked.  It’s bad enough realizing that you’re not as good as you thought you were but a far worse thing when this realization comes to you in front of an audience.

It took me more than a week to gather up enough courage to give it another go.  It may take a while before I can produce any fiction worthy of showing to anyone so in the meantime, expect bits of fluff like this.

I’ve also become a bit of a shutterbug with my new iPhone so expect more pics as well.  I’ll try to refrain from uploading any taken of my own poop (though I may be persuaded to make them available upon request).