November has been an interesting month. On the one hand, it's been the best month I've had in two years -- I finally got a job after two years of unemployment and the worst streak of absolute poverty I've ever experienced (thank you, Jesus!).
On the other, this good fortune has not come without some unfortunate side effects. Up until thirty days ago, I was making slow, but steady and methodical progress on the book about Neil Young I am committed to deliver to Backbeat Books next April.
Since I got the full-time day job, this progress has slowed to an absolute crawl.
You know what I really miss? I'll tell ya' what. The good old old days when I worked my day job at the record store, the record company or whatever -- and then came home, cooked my TV dinner, or whatever -- and then wrote my shit for the Rocket or whoever till 1 AM or so, smoke in one hand, beer in the other till I just plain dropped.
Those were the days.
The past two years of being completely stressed out about whether I was going to use my unemployment check for gas, food or rent were another matter altogether. Even so, somehow, I got through them -- and I thank the lord in heaven that those days are over (knock wood, and praise the lord). Unfortunately, the book I'm writing about Neil Young has proven to be the biggest casualty of this good fortune.
See, here's the thing.
In the past six months of staying up all night till the sun comes up (since I've had the luxury of being able to do so), I've knocked out roughly half the book. However, since getting a "real job" again (which absolutely needed to happen), I've had to re-adjust my body clock. No more all-nighters writing, In fact, just getting used to a "normal" schedule of getting up early to go to work has taken about a month to get used to. When I get home at night, all I want to do is eat first, and then crash -- which I usually do on the couch most nights.
Again, I have to ask whatever happened to those days of working a nine-to-five, coming home and writing for a few hours with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other? Gone forever I reckon...and so be it.
What this means, unfortunately, is that I've written barely a word about Neil Young for the book in about a month. Getting off of that horse was easy, and also absolutely necessary. Getting back on, is unfortunately going to be much tougher -- especially after establishing the vampiric lifestyle of all-night writing sessions I had so gotten used to. I haven't written a word about Neil in nearly a month, and the publisher expects 150,000 of them by April.
The good news is I'm adjusting to working a day job pretty well, and I'm slowly exorcising myself of my other writing commitments. Earlier this week, I finished off my present review commitments for Blogcritics, and also bowed out of doing their weekly newsletter (Wednesdays had become a real bitch for me when I came home so tired each night).
I'm not sure what my future at BC is anyway -- but my instincts tell me things are pretty close to running their natural course there. Things haven't been right there for a long time -- the way they totally dropped the ball on my Michael Jackson story still holds a particular sting -- and new management aside, I don't anticipate things getting much better anytime soon.
That said, I owe a lot to BC -- my involvement in the site has led to many great things, not the least of which has been the Neil Young book deal. Even so, I can't escape the feeling that my days there are numbered.
Anyway, I write this looking to rejuvenate my writing juices on the Neil book in particular. That is one horse I really need to climb back aboard. And I will.
I guess the thing I have to keep telling myself, is the same thing I keep saying to another extremely gifted BC writer who notoriously slaves over every word he writes -- and that is don't fight it, just write it.
At the end of the day, it's a conversation.
Sometimes, you just gotta write.
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