A writer not writing

What did you do when your book was finished?

Key Light went through a dozen re-writes, after it was finally retyped into my first computer. I'd written three drafts on a typewriter. In manuscript pages it was something like 650 pages, a whopping 150,000 words, which in successive re-writes got pared down to its final 115,000 words.

Going to the computer every day between my three jobs, I finally copied my book into the IBM database from printed sheets. I could move things around, shape things up, spell check and grammar check and tighten up my story I'd lived with for about four years.

And then ...

I finally signed on to Prodigy, which came with that first computer. What was it there for? I didn't need any such thing. And from no online usage at all I was soon exceeding my allotted time online in bulletin board posting to writing groups. Poetry rooms. Oh what fun. When I bought a house, there was no Internet at all in the new town for two years. I went through a painful Internet and e-mail withdrawal.

Being a painter, I whipped out a canvas and jumped into my other passion, painting. Surveying the box of colors I had, and it being June, I rapidly did a painting like the main character Sada would have in my just finished book, Key Light. I called it Pthalo Beach, pthalo blue being its predominant color. Summer. A beach. Water. Sand. Huge sweeps of color, wild energy, "This is how Sada paints," I told myself. Then I made a mistake and stopped. There's no Un-Do in painting. So the little flag-looking thing is where I pulled paint into where I didn't want it. I was too enthusiastic to let it dry before continuing, and the previous colors ran. Well, it's an abstract!

This time last year, when Days of Dante was finished, after its corrections and upgrades and feedback from "first readers" and "second readers" I was again at a loss for what to do. You come to the same computer you used every day, and you're still doing it, but what to do now? Of course I was sending out queries to agents. But there was all this time left over.

Now there are Yahoo chat rooms. Now there is Facebook, Twitter, eBay. Time fillers, all. And how about a blog? I studied everyone else's blog before I started one of my own, played this game of journal writing except now it was online, public, with more prying eyes and "tsk-ing" potential. So what? We're all in the same blog bog, being trivial while attempting to sound profound. In a year I'll have a record of my high points, low points, all this energy and smarts and ideas that could have gone into the new book

I made a quilt. Never made a quilt before. Blogged about it. Wrote a children's book about it, got that published.

Twitter lets you share your interesting moments even if before blogging you might never remember these things a year later. I baked a pie. I found a snake in my living room. I shoveled snow. I read hundreds of new books. I re-read many more. I tweeted what I read. The good thing about twitter is it all disappears in the glut of everyone else's insignificant tweets.

And in between, the new book changed its name from What You Wish For to Your Other Left. With word processing it's so much easier. One day you delete 15,000 words and the next day add only 2.000. You keep a log of word counts, that's important. A good day is 1,000 to 5,000 words. It would be nice if the output was steady, but it's not.

You have to stop to file taxes. There's that line on the 1040 where you get to put your Other Income, Royalties.

You have to stop to take a nap. A writer not writing is like everyone else but something is wrong. Not Finished is a scolding nagger pointing a finger at a writer not writing. Not Finished whispers unkindly that you're a one-trick pony, nothing left to show us. They told us it's the loneliest job in the world. They told us it's a job of self selection, self motivation. Nobody makes you write but you.

How did an Arizona Coral Snake get north of Chicago? - Part II

Update April 8th

It's been a week. If we don't see the snake can we safely say it's gone now?

The Animal Control guy was here late in the afternoon. The inside temperature was in the low 60s, after the heat wave that brought the coral snake up from wherever it was hibernating. We're past asking "how did it get here" and have been concentrating on "Where is it now?" and "Is it gone yet?"

I answered the door wrapped in a blanket. The heat has not been on since he first arrived, called by the heating contractor I first called. "You want your house back, right?" he asked. I nodded. He began picking up all the glue blocks and taking them down into the basement. I offered a tray to help him, and that made less trips. Soon all the glue blocks were gone from the living room and I was told it was okay now to turn the furnace back on and put the furniture back.

This house was built in 1840 and has a dirt floor basement on half, and a crawl space and a rock foundation. Huge limestone boulders one can only imagine them being put in place with only horses and levers. There's plenty of ways out as well as in for a snake.

Supposedly nocturnal, my visitor coral snake came up when the house was unseasonably warm, close to 80 degrees in the evening. By contrast, it is in the low 30s today and it was snowing when I woke up. That's April.

I won't forget. I'm keeping an eye on the corners in every room. I have a camera ready and a flashlight and a phone number to call. I really don't think I'll see that snake again. A neighbor's pet? A stowaway on a produce truck passing through on the highway? The how it got here questions provide plots for future stories. I've decided my snake was male. I will never forget him and the shock he gave me.

How did an Arizona Coral Snake get north of Chicago?

I was just finishing up a nice salad, colorful, mixed greens, half an avocado, Roma tomato slices and some diluted-with-water Western dressing, the last of the bottle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. There on the floor and halfway up the glass front of my fireplace was a snake. It didn't move much, and it had bands of color that made it pretty and I came closer for another look. My snake didn't move, there was little kink in it, about five inches from its head, and the rest was strait out glued to the glass, then draped over the hearth and onto the floor.

This needs to be outside, I thought, and went to the kitchen, retrieved a pair of kitchen tongs and came back to pick it up. Not a good idea. I got hold of it and it came alive, soon all of it was back on the floor and heading for the floor grate that's the cold air return for the furnace. In less than a half minute it was entirely out of sight.

I called my neighbor, my go-to guy for most of my homeowner problems. I described my snake: red, black, white, nice even distribution of color, each color the same size as the next. About 18 inches long. Black head, black tail. If I didn't know better I'd say I had a coral snake. Probably something that only LOOKS like a coral snake because this is not the southwest.

My neighbor came over and we moved the electric fireplace and opened the floor grate. He spread heavy plastic film over the opening and was about to replace the grate when he said "there's your snake!" I was so glad someone else was seeing this because by now I felt I'd only imagined a coral snake in my living room. He removed the plastic and we both watched my snake retreat to a darker place in the duct. Back went the plastic, the grate, the fireplace. Stay down there!

This morning I called two furnace places that do duct cleaning. One of them I'd had cleaned the furnace ducts when I first bought this house. Having asthma in a house that was built in 1840, I needed reassurance that there was nothing dangerous in my air.

Alas this is now Good Friday and nobody will come out until Monday. We'll see.

Online, I ask lots of questions, look at all the pictures of snakes, find out I may have one that's very dangerous. The bite isn't so painful but the neurotoxin in the snake's venom will start to work shutting things down until death occurs in about an hour. Now I'm glad I didn't pick it up and have it bite me.

So, the question remains. How did an Arizona Coral Snake get north of Chicago?

Update - Friday 6 PM My expensive snake. Heating company came out (I'd called two, one didn't return my call) and looked around with a fiber optic camera and didn't find the snake. $79.00. They called Animal Control who came out an hour later and set glue-board traps and will be here tomorrow to check them. $175.00 plus $20.00 trip charge for every time they come and haven't gotten the snake yet. I felt even more apprehensive when they threw out the plastic covering to the vent. The glue traps around it on the floor are in addition to the ones they put inside the vent and down at the other end in the basement. When it's finally removed, another $400.00 for duct cleaning.

Update - Saturday 9 PM Animal control guy was here at 6 AM. I'd been up since 3. He checks upstairs and downstairs glue traps, no trap had moved. I've been walking around all day with a flashlight and look in there a lot. Baked a pie to keep warm. Made lots of coffee to keep warm. I'm not supposed to use the furnace. I don't know if that means they took the furnace apart. They seemed to think having the snake in the furnace would not be good. I told him not to come tomorrow, it's Easter Sunday. He said, "You sure? Well okay, I have a 4 yr old and it is Easter."

Have a list of new questions - can we lure it to the glue traps with maybe a hot dog? Actually the only meat I have in the house is some ham for sandwiches, and some frozen fish. Can we use smoke in the duct to make it move toward the glue traps. Can we end the search if we haven't found it in a week? What's the next step?

Called brother-in-law in Arizona. Maybe they have those snakes-in-the-house problems too. Well, no, but be careful. Keep a 5-gallon bucket handy. Wear sturdy shoes. Have some heavy leather gloves handy.

Anyone else got advice about snakes in a house? Dangerous ones?