Way too pensive for a Friday afternoon

What's going on since I last logged in to this thing? Well, I've cranked out about 200 pages of my novel, most of which I've trashed and rewritten, trashed again and rewritten more... As it stands now, I've got about 5 solid pages I'm happy with. So it goes.

Been busy with our redesign of the Reno Gazette's entertainment site. I get to edit that daily for our 100,000 weekly readers, so that's cool. Also, I've had a few stories printed in our weekly tab, Calendar. Mostly reviews of CDs and movies, certainly nothing that will be shortlisted for the Pulizter. I'll have a review of Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain running soon whenever they get the movie into Reno.

My ultimate dream is still to write book reviews on a national level. It's a natural fit for me, really. Selling a novel is still a longshot, whether I can infuse it with that rare combination of marketability and quality writing or not. That doesn't seem to matter much -- it seems to come down to luck and, well, a bunch more luck. How else to explain how someone like Dr. Phil can have a spot atop the NY Times bestseller list?

But then I read Joan Didion. And I read Ian McEwan. I read Don Delillo and John Irving and I get excited about the whole thing all over again. There's nothing particularly magical about the craft of writing. It's sort of like making veal stock, adding chopped shallots and a few splashes of Bordeaux until you have a thick and hearty demi-glace, an essence, so to speak. Mmm...French cuisine....but I digress.

This post was longer, but I've edited for brevity and in the spirit of keeping it lighthearted.

Happy New Year.