Phase II

Del Boca Vista, Potter-style, is in Phase II. Phase I is what you're reading right now. This blog has been a way to get me in training. Get me to the point so that I could stack a bunch of words on top of each other, day after day. Then when became routine, I'd arbitrarily increase the size of the stack, difficulty points and style factors.

The tactic is very similar to training for a marathon (at least in my fertile imagination). You run a bunch of smaller miles, then you can do the occasional large, ridiculous number of miles. Well, I'm already tired of this comparison.

Writing shares some qualities with running a marathon. Lots of lonely, daily work that's pointed toward an event that is over so quickly. But I think that it's more like taking a very slow walk each day while someone pokes you with a stick. If you do this day after day, you get to the point where you say: "Nothing special. Not getting anywhere at this rate of speed. The guy's not poking too hard today. Good times...." But each day you walk, you get a special magical token. Nah. I give up. I'm too tired to construct a decent metaphor. Anybody, please help me out here.

Let me try for simple: I listen to myself while I write this blog. That's it really. Attend and see what happens. Build the habit of words. Become a writer.

Now I feel like I've reached a certain level of fitness. Now I want to lace up some ideas and see where I go. Now I want to increase my pace a bit. This feels like my next phase. If the sequence is: sit, weeble, crawl, walk, run, run like hell, I'm probably between crawl and walk, or walk and run. Each phase gets differently demanding. This means no book length things yet. That's still in the future, somewhere between run and run like hell and ultramarathon.

I've got enough wind to just take off for a brief sprint. Remember how it feels when you're going so fast, you hear the wind in your ears? Well, with my plus-sized ears, it's probably easier for me to do that than you. But I'm waiting on that day when the blood will be pulsing in my head and I'm going full tilt. I will be a blur.