author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Wait, I've got it! I've got it I've got it I've--

Pause. OK. At Moonlight Diner again, having dropped Cate off at the airport and waiting for John to tell me he's ready to be picked up from work. Trying to finish this dang draft like NOW. (Also eating the Smothered Fries, which are Smothered in cheese and green chili. The dish is not terrific, but it's redeemable and filling. I swear, it's like I could start a whole new blog just about working my way through their menu while spending 3-hour stints writing at their 4-top behind the bar-side register station.)

So. Struggling my way through the rewrite of Scene VI. ("Icicles filled the long window / With barbaric glass. / The shadow of the blackbird / Crossed it, to and fro.") It's no longer a psychologist telling the narrator that fear obscures our clear vision until we see demons where there are only mundane difficulties. Now it's the narrator's lover, pissed off at having their romantic evening interrupted by another fit of novel revision, saying that the narrator needs to adjust some priorities. (While the narrator gazes out the window at starlings crossing behind ice and in front of the sun.) And the narrator's like, "Oops, sorry, demon's waking up again, I gotta go; also, you left your oven on and the demon is thinking about burning you up in a house fire. Don't let that happen, kthxbai."

About halfway through writing that scene, I got good and stuck trying to make the phone conversation work. Also, a large family gathering eating at the next table had begun to emit exceedingly distressing noises. Look, people: What did I do to deserve your kid's screaming tantrum? I mean, really? Thank goodness for headphones and Kate Bush's The Dreaming. Turned up quite loud.

Anyway, got through that. Then got through the next couple scenes in which the writer/demon relationship becomes sort of writer/demonic Muse ("But I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know"). The pacing of that arc seemed to slightly shift as I got through Scenes VIII and IX. I started to like what I was seeing.

Then in was time for Scene X, originally another psych session. The narrator had decided to tell the shrink about the first time the demon became apparent, expecting to finally break through that professional skeptism ("Even the bawds of euphony / Would cry out sharply") and get some real help. Naturally, I'll be replacing that with another phone call with the lover. Or ex. Their relationship is a little bit of both now.

And I realized--their roles are reversed! Now it's the narrator who is looking forward to the demon's voice, because it tells her how the write--and finish, uh-oh--the book... and it's the lover who is now convinced that there's something weird going on. "You were right--the oven was on. How did you know? Is there really something to this? Oh my God, you must not finish that book!"

You want Process? I WILL GIVE YOU PROCESS.

(Wow, it's a good thing that burbling about The Process doesn't jinx The Process. Yay.)

HAY YOU! Yeah, you know who you are. You will have email REAL SOON NOW.