Month: May 2025

I keep feeling like I missed a day this week, as though transitioning out of teaching and taking classes this semester has me hanging on to any deadline that may have been overlooked. I checked. I didn’t. No need to move to version 9 just yet. It is the Sunday before the great summer adventure. It is Mother’s Day and the day before the youngest’s birthday, and a good day overall. So many things are changing right now. It is happening quickly and I feel like at times I lose the thread of what is happening. I am excited and mostly prepared.

Mostly prepared should’ve been my middle name. It remains my persistent state of being. I am mostly prepared for the summer, for next year, for the future that follows. I am mostly prepared to get married again, to be a husband, to grow (even older) with someone. I don’t know that I’ve ever been ready for anything that happened in my life. When I sit in the dark and think about it in reverse all I can see are the glimpses of what could’ve been if I’d done the right thing or been ready or studied a bit more. I should’ve taken one more pass at that novel before turning it in.

I spend too much of my waking hours thinking about what I could’ve been and not enough considering what I still can be. That needs to be fixed. I need to put in the proper time to be who and what I want to be moving forward. I am in a tremendous position to do so. I have a good life with the Lady Talis. All I want is to make it better.

Some Thoughts:

1. The more I write, the more I become aware of words I tend to overuse. Today’s episode features the word “Just”. I need to find a replacement for it lickety split, or at least attempt to delete it wherever I see it take root in the writing.
2. I endured a video showing the criminal investigation of a car crash the other day while I was grading papers. That video lives in my headspace. The incident led to the death of two people and was caused by two cars that were street racing in broad daylight. What got to me was how fast they were moving when the accident occurred–90+ upon impact. What happened was a car was crossing the lanes making a left turn onto a side street. It never saw the racers because they were out of visual sight when the car started the turn. They covered the span of three football fields in half the time it took to make the turn, the lead car crashing into the turning victims with such force that the turning car was torn in half. People in Phoenix drive crazy like that all the time. It is no wonder there are so many deaths…

I figured I’d run through this before I got to anything else. I don’t know home much else I am actually going to get to. The Lady Talis is done with her morning routine, so we are likely to be starting our day together. It means I need to get better at finding the time to write and making sure that priority is realized a lot earlier in the day. I make this a priority everyday, so why not that?

While I am in this space I want to cover ground that might feel uneven. This is why I number these thoughts…

1. Hype matters. It absolutely should not. There is more hype around people based on the noise they can make or where (even who) they come from than there is in terms of what they actually do for themselves. This happens in all aspects of life. Nobody questions the success of the Trump kids because their father is a known. However, what have they done to stand on their own? The same applies to ball where I’m watching legacies get offers and those in places where legacies are getting noticed or even where a coach has pull are getting offers while my last kid has none. We’ll have to see how it all unfolds, because he’s got a big brother poised to make big moves of his own after being an unknown.
2. My head is filled with rhymes today and I don’t know why. That sense of poetry pervades what I say and the way I say the things I must convey.
3. Had a stray thought about a novel chapter last night that made me realize that what I wrote didn’t make the most sense. I meant to go back and correct it today. I hope tomorrow will still be okay.
4. Seriously, the rhyme stuff has to go away.

Done.

All the grading, all the nonsense, all the assignments. I finished my semester, my first MFA semester, and I am ready to move on to focusing on the novel as well as upcoming summer madness. I only am taking 1 class this summer (light work in comparison), which starts on the 19th as well as teaching a handful starting on the 27th. I’m really excited about this summer. I have a chance to finish this novel over the next 45 days and from there I will be moving on to bigger and better projects. It has been a long road this semester, and the fall looks.. daunting.

I need this break and everything that comes with it. I expect to have a very good time hanging out and spending time with the Lady Talis as we explore the world. This is our next step. I go into it understanding where I have been and where the others in my life are in terms of a life journey. Not everything in that sense is wonderful, but me and the lady are doing the best we can with all of it. That is all anyone can ever do.

Moving from spring to summer is an especially difficult journey for me. It is one filled with joy, but at the end I always find myself jammed with work and not able to look up from that to pause, breathe, and appreciate what is coming. Just once it would be nice to slide into the summer without having anything I specifically need to be doing. That has not been the case for a decade or even two. More and more the summer is another type of responsibility, which is offset by fantastic travels and having moments of a life in which I can be in a space not dominated by kids and their needs or proclivities.

When people talk about that next chapter it can often be a ballad about lounging on a beach somewhere, starting a new career, etc. I just want my house back. I don’t mind the occasional youth invasion, but to live in a situation where you’re constantly cleaning up after kids, tiptoeing around the habits and actions you want to be taking, clamoring for silence, and having to force them off the TV so you can use it is no way to live.

In my life it is only going to get worse–at least in the short term. I don’t know how to deal with that other than to wall myself off and find spaces I can care about separate from that part of my life. I certainly won’t have the ability to be alone anymore. At least now there are a few hours of peace and solemnity. That is gone come fall.

So, best live it up this summer.

I’m sitting in a hall watching a presentation about how to be a lifeguard. Not for me. It’s the kid’s first job orientation and I was required to be here for reasons I have yet to figure out. I’m here though, so I might as well get ten minutes in (between Pokémon matches). Last night I watched a full half of basketball. It was fun! It was the Warriors, who I truly enjoy watching—especially with Jimmy Butler playing Robin to Curry’s Batman. The bat went down in the first, but it didn’t matter. The chocolate boy wonder was making heads bounce.

I’m loving this team and the vibe both on and off the court. Butler is hilarious and quite a joker. This game he apparently convinced Buddy Hield to wear the wrong pants. That went a bit far as it cost the team a timeout, but that level of fun and energy is infectious. The team is humming and loving these playoffs.

This is the last week of school, which means a ton of nonsense to grade, some of which will not be nonsense but the culmination of a student’s long and hard work across the span of at least a semester. I have a few classes I really loved and a few more than I endured. My endurance needs to hold up for a few more days as I get through the last of these papers and move towards having less on my mind, which means more time to focus on the biggest issue on my mind.

The Novel.

This summer, as discussed, I have to finish revising this novel for publication. Revision means rewriting the entire thing. I’m about done with the easy part of that, which means the hard part is crafting a wholly new story that contains the character threads of the original story but weaved together in a plot that actually makes a lot more sense. I am also no longer focusing on pleasing my editor. She and I fundamentally disagree on a number of things–especially in terms of the style of dystopian world I should be projecting. No political correctness sensors are going to screw this novel into mundanity.

But first, I need to grade a ton of work. Eventually I need to consider the body of the class itself and how and why some classes grew while others shrank. I need to consider my own role and understanding of the system therein. It is simply not a problem for Today’s Talislegger though. Today’s Talislegger is thinking about packing for a wonderful retreat. I am thinking about having the main person in my life be the only person in my orbit for a long while. I am thinking about the opportunities to write, to walk along a sandy beach, to experience joy and creativity and many new things.

I am thinking about a wedding that is only a few months down the road, about what needs to be done to prepare, about the money that still needs to be applied to the task.

I am thinking about a life post-wedding, and the next ten years. I am wondering where that decade will take us and I am looking forward to finding out.

This has been a relatively productive writing day. I am at the point in the revision where I am getting into the tough stuff–the heart of the conversation that shapes what the next thirty chapters will be. I’m worried about it, because I poured a ton of character development into these first 32,000 words and 72 pages and if I cannot get this section right, the book will fall flat and make no sense. It’s slowing me down in a good way, but I need to power through this for real. I guess I’m worried the most about the next steps and what they are and if there is enough there to constitute a novel. I’m going to legitimately need to cut 30K which is like another 70 pages of text. On the other hand, I already added 10K to the first twelve chapters, which argues I can make up for the lost text by writing better stuff.

That means I’ll need to grind to make the deadline. I need to get back to the 500 words an hour schedule at minimum. At that rate alone it will take me at least 100 hours to get to where the novel needs to be. Realistically I’ll be looking at more like 140 hours at 500/hour, and that means a minimum of 5 hours a day to get it done mid June. In other words, I gotta get faster now. 500 words an hour is a nice pace if you can afford it. I cannot if I am going to make my deadlines. I need to be putting out 3K every day from here on out to get to where I want to be when I want to be there.

So, it is grind time.

(This is a continuation of a recent Freewrite Friday)

He missed Grace more than Sam. Grace was one of those people you meet, hear their name, and think, that is exactly what you should’ve been named. They used to go out for monthly lunches before she married Sam. He thought of her as big sister as much as Sam–perhaps even more, because Grace actually gave sisterly advice. The problem was Grace didn’t like his wife terribly much. She’d say, “she’s a great girl!” or, “it is so wonderful what she’s been doing with herself.” These were the telltale signs of female dislike. He’d cultivated an understanding of such things over the years of watching one girlfriend after another be skewered by his sisters. All of his brothers understood the language. This made it especially odd when he’d decided to marry Elizabeth anyway.

Elizabeth Stapley-Moss was the most engaging woman Adrian had ever met. From that first date on through the year and a half of courtship he’d been excited about every moment they spent together. He knew these things didn’t last. People get older. The new wears off. He had to wonder when the new wore off him. How long was it until she was looking at him the way people look at a car after its first dent.

The car was another one. His father was a car enthusiast. He did everything in his power to make sure his kids followed the same way of thinking. For High School graduation he bought each kid a partially constructed classic car. The kind of car never came as a surprise. Dad felt like cars were people’s real spirit animals. Every question, every conversation, every choice he and his siblings made growing up led them down a path towards the unfinished heap of metal that would be sitting in the driveway graduation night. His was an AMG Hammer circa 1987–the best of the three model years, according to his dad. It needed a lot of work. German engineering might be the gold standard but finding parts in Iowa was like finding a herd of Unicorns. They worked together for months to get the base set and new tires to match the classic silver rims. All in all it took him and his dad three years to finish the car. Adrian couldn’t remember the last time he drove it.

Adrian couldn’t remember the last time she’d let it sit in the driveway.

I am struggling with getting started in the mornings. I just don’t want to. I love the story I am working on. I love writing. I just don’t want to start. So, I sat here and decided to write this blog as a way to get me going. It worked yesterday. I heated up with that short (I will get back to that story for sure). It had my mind moving and ready to write. My mind is already moving on this story this morning, because my subconscious was working on it all night. I recognize where some of the holes are, though not what it will take to fix them. That could be the problem, but those problems are chapters away.

It could be that my kid is playing in his spring football game right now and I have no way to watch or listen. I have little patience for these things and want the answers as soon as possible. Real time or before, please. Not getting that is bugging me. Not being able to know how he’s doing or if he’s even okay is bugging me. It is a big one for him–he’s trying to establish himself as a leader and a starter as an 18 year old kid who is far far far away from peaking athletically.

Those are the mental issues I am dealing with. Physically, I am dealing with hand and knuckle pain which is likely arthritic. No real idea how to overcome the pain. I am living in the land of acceptance at present.

Some Thoughts:

1. I ran out of things to say. I think I ought to go exercise or something to clear my brain space.

When Adrian considered the number of things he didn’t do anymore because of his wife he didn’t like the answer. Drinking beers was the first one. He was good with that one. He didn’t like who he was when he drank. She did, at first. She met him at a bar in downtown Ames, Iowa. She was working as a waitress floating between tables prompting people to buy more drinks. He sat at a booth in the middle section of the bar with four of his closest friends and bought drinks all night. Then he came back the next night and the night after that. They fell into a rhythm, first with casual conversation, then with a game: each beer bought him a question. She answered every one. The second week of this he asked her if she would go out with him. She said yes. He was two years into the marriage when he drank his last beer. He’d put on a gut, mostly because he didn’t go to the gym with his guys anymore. That was the second thing he didn’t do because of his wife.

“I don’t like it when you leave at night. What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” She said.

He was gone most days working. She switched to day shifts at the bar for a while before the work tapered off. He didn’t know what she did between the hours of nine am and 5 pm. She said she volunteered at a local school. They didn’t have any kids. She wanted kids. Three to be precise. He’d be fine with two if they could afford that. His dad once said that you shouldn’t have more kids than parents. Once they outnumber you, there isn’t much left for you to do but submit to their reign. Adrian had three older brothers and four older sisters. The youngest of the girls still lived at home. She was twenty three.

He didn’t talk to them much–another thing he wife suggested. It wasn’t like they all hung out beforehand. When he finally got married he thought it would put him back in the conversation with his brothers. They all were married; all had kids. Sam and Lisa also were married, but Sam didn’t have any kids. She and her partner Grace wanted to adopt, but people in Iowa were fickle. The thought of an openly lesbian couple raising a child bothered too many of the right people in the wrong ways.

Some Thoughts:

1. Warming up to take on a few novel chapters. Gottta heat up the oven before you cook.
2. I like where this was headed. To be continued?