Brooding about the future

Now that the short novel is in a secure spot -- no ringing telephone or interrupting remark from H can shoo away a budding thought now -- I've been wondering what my creative life will be like after Sodom is done. I really do hope this is my last novel -- I don't want to work this hard any more, to be honest. If I write something new, and I probably will, I want it to involve fewer words. Maybe more posthumous plays. Or very short stories. Nothing as difficult and as ambitious as the work at hand, which I rather consider my swan song in the Go For Broke department. I want to relax in my final years.

I also want to catch up on reading. I've been so prolific for so many years that I've never had time to do all the reading for pleasure I've wanted to do. I want to fill my Kindle with classical literature and read it all. I want to discover new and exciting audio books, like the U.S.A. trilogy I'm still listening to (about 6 hrs to go).

I've put aside, retired, some projects I thought I'd be doing -- the art song animations, the music for the Varmints libretto -- again because I just don't have the energy to work as hard as the projects would require. I'm through with marathons, so to speak. I may still jog around the track once or twice.

I wish I could come up with a video project that wouldn't be as demanding as my past projects -- just so I have an excuse to edit. Editing is great fun. But you have to have something to edit. I was toying with putting together A Day In The Life Of Sketch story on video and may yet. I don't want to quit video entirely, though The Farewell Wake surely was my last Go For Broke project on video, having the same relationship to video as the present project has to writing prose.

Well, something will occur to me, I'm sure. I ain't dead yet. Knock knock knock.

At the end of the short novel, CJ the protagonist is listening to Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" as an audio book as he drives across Mississippi countryside on his way to Florida for the winter. He starts laughing so hard that he misses a stop sign ahead and ...

Actually it's a positive ending. A positive ending! Written by me! Listen up, o ye gods ...