So where were we? Shit, I don't know. It's 11:30 PM as I write this. I've just completed the first draft a novel, less than three hours ago. So I thought I might as well knock out this column, as well.

Uhm, that sucks as an intro. Let me back up. My name is Adam P. Knave. Hi, how are you? Good to see you here. Hope the kids are doing well. Did Billy's cough clear up? Fuck I hope so, that little precocious tyke!

I suck at this, don't I? No, to hell with that attitude, I'm gonna keep at it until I get it right.

I write things. Freelance. Anything, really, that needs to be written. And by "needs to be written" I mean "anything I can publish and sell." Or, you know, whatever. I write things.

To give you perspective on what I mean: I just finished a novel. I gave myself nine weeks to finish it from almost-start to last page. Almost start is because I wrote some prior to this choice, but not very much. See, I had to do that, to write it as hard as possible and make myself crazy because I have other deadlines. The only choice I saw that made sense was to knock the novel out before I started on the next thing.

Which was, in retrospect, perfect and fucking well deadly.

Still, I have a column here. You're reading it. And another column here I share, and some other stuff here that I do as well, when the time strikes. Then I have a project coming up (more about that in a column or two), one on its heels, and then another after that. Each one of these projects will take months to complete.

So every few months I stare down the barrel of a different gun. Each deadline is a precious thing that has to be feared and respected. If I don't get the work done I become unreliable. If I become unreliable in the eyes of the editors and publishers I work with then they won't ask me for more stuff. At that point I have a problem.

Add to that equation the fact that a lot of these people want deadlines they dream up. They may not line up with existing deadlines. Part of my job is convincing them that the deadline I need is really the one they want. Then I have to hit that deadline and make the work good enough to be worth all the fucking around done at the front end of the process.

Which doesn't get into the post-op issues. Those, too, can wait a while. Let's get to know our setting, shall we?

99% of the time I write at my desk. It's a mess. Cans of soda, bottles of water, books, and other crap liter it like the aftermath of a Valdez level spill. I write on a laptop, hooked up to an external keyboard. It's a loud keyboard, old school rise and run modeled on an IBM model M. So when I work it sounds like bullets are being shelled around. I love that noise.

Sometimes when I have to travel I write on the road. I've written on Amtrak trains, in hotel rooms, on planes, and in airport terminals. I just prefer not to. So here I am, at home, writing, while the cat wanders around and generally hates me for not devoting all my time to her.

If I'm writing, I'm playing music. My neighbors probably hate me: I don't play music softly very often.

Yeah, shit, I don't know. By the time you read this I will have gotten back from L.A. I have a meeting out there with a guy, which might amount to something or to nothing. No way to know just yet. What I do know is that I have already agreed to a Non-Disclosure Agreement about it, so until I get some permission I can't say anything else. As soon as I can, I'll bring it up here.

I don't, mind you, do this for a living. I am mostly (right now) working in small press, which means not much money and the same amount of work. Luckily I work with great people so it is all worth it. But it does mean that I go to work, work all day, come home and have to hit deadlines / make calls / edit / etc.

There's always something, some iron in a fire somewhere that needs attention. This past week I went to dinner with a friend, also a writer, and that was nice, but it was also work at times. You know, discussing an anthology here, a convention there -- keeping up to date on the industry and checking sources, sometimes I am even the source myself.

The next column? Well, this could change, of course, but as of right now the plan is to discuss the project I will be neck deep in at the time.

So today while I was finishing up the novel I kept asking myself, "Is this really the end? Is it rushed? Is this at all right?" because I am endlessly neurotic. I mean, there I was, working my ass off and contemplating a beer, but all I could do was worry and fuss at what I hadn't even finished doing yet.

This column, it won't be a dry long look at what I'm writing at the moment and look I can type and how boring would that be to read, right? No, instead it will feature sentences like the former, which make no real sense but somehow feel perfectly fine to me. This is going to be me mostly focusing on trying to build my career up into a viable thing I can eat off of, and all of the stupidity that happens around that.

Which means, in a sense, it becomes like NASCAR. You're all going to be there waiting for the crashes, secretly hoping for me to fuck up so I can tell you about it in horrible Technicolor detail. Which I will, if it goes down that way.

Then again, next time around I may just decide to damn well write about possums. I think possums are cool. So I might. You don't know, and frankly, neither do I.

Yup. Welcome to the sideshow. Come see the Amazing Typing Man. Revel in his... typing. Uhm. Fuck. Maybe I should start this one over again...