What would Galt do?

Duct tape math.

There's a formula on the wall of my writing office, 2 + 1 = 0.  It needs to be updated, 3 + 1 = minus 1.  Three years of writing full time, ten titles, almost half a million words, plus a year to clear land and build a house, left me stranded and penniless, begging the neighbors for day labor at minimum wage so I can buy dog food, cigarettes, Oscar Meyer, coffee, and saltines, more or less in that order of priority. The dog has to eat. Not his fault that he got run over by a FedEx van, dislocated hip, broken foreleg that didn't heal right, blind in both eyes with thick white cataracts and crusty goop that has to be softened and cleaned every morning. He has to be bathed two or three times a week, fighting summer fleas that refuse to die.

Summer doesn't bother me. Winter does.

What would Galt do? -- no phone, no car, no money, no book sales. I have successfully exited organized society, worse than a desert island, ignored by the world and forgotten. Once a day I walk up the hill to fill a couple jugs of water and empty spam from my inbox. I get one email a week on average. The last one was from my brother Roger. My sister-in-law expressed an interest in reading Partners, which is a sort of obscenity, a family curiosity, old nutty Alan, a black sheep destined to starve to death. I had to punch two extra holes in my belt last week.

Have at it, Gail. Read two pages and wrinkle your nose, shake your head in disdain and put it down, never to be opened again, no book review on Amazon, no mention in social media. I swear by my life and my love of it that it doesn't matter.

.

Okay, smart guy, now what?

Totally brainless. 

Apparently, I'm not going to die tomorrow or on a predictable schedule. This is both good news and awful news. I'll have to do something about that, write something. Please, no more novels, way too much work, months of frigid winter looming on the horizon. It would be nice to write something that made money. I had a gig last month, notes and ideas. Unlikely that the same lightning would hit my wallet twice. Tom chipped in money ostensibly for services rendered a year ago. I consider it a gift, little chance of paying him back. Uncertain if there's any carpentry work to be had, or whether I'm strong enough to do that again. Rats.

As interesting as the puzzle of poverty may be, that's not the big problem. I need an idea. I already discarded (again) the stupid cozy mystery The Dead Things Place that I started in 1987 and tossed in the trash. I can do a lot of things, but I can't write anything simple, a whodunnit in a redwood forest, a Park Service ranger who has to figure out how a body got dumped. Gah.

Okay, smart guy, where to?

Not outer space. Been there, done that. I toyed with the idea of shooting video at the Pioneer Gathering event next week, a couple hundred people, black powder rifles, hatchet throwing, handiwork, coal-fired donkey engines, bluegrass music. It's something that anyone could do, shooting fish in a barrel with a little HD camera. Nope. Any doofus can make a documentary. Video schmideo.

A nonfiction essay about Trump and the Democrats. Pt-t-t-th. I used to be fairly creative, for fuck's sake. The last thing I need to do is follow headlines, get lost in a shitstorm of bloggers and 180-character twats. Same problem with work for hire at Upwork. Last time I wrote an article there, the client screwed me. Projects offered that I wouldn't touch with a dirty fork. Sometimes I think the world has gone bonkers. But that doesn't solve my problem. I need a creative chore that makes sense, something only I can do.

Hmph. That would be a story (taps fingers on keys). Maybe a short story.

Who? Where? When? What? Why?



(insert idea here)



.