Saturday Morning Update: Peat and beer and forward momentum

On Friday, I worked all day. That is, I wrote. And then I walked the dogs. And I wrote. And then I stripped the guest bed. And I wrote. And then I put clean sheets on the bed. And I wrote. And then I exercised...

You get the picture.

Lots of progress, but not as much forward progress as you might think. It's hard. It takes time. I write everything fast, in a newspapery way, and then I have to go back and rewrite. So I wrote a page or two, and then I went back--way back, to a much earlier chapter--and rewrote. And then I went back to that cursed Chapter Eight and wrote some more. And on and on.

I've been working this morning, too; our house guest is gone, Doug is upstairs with a radio, a heating pad, and two dogs (and while that sounds like a joke, it's not; he pulled a muscle in his back), and I've been writing for the last two hours.

Last night was very pleasant. Our next-door-neighbor took pity on my writer-blocky state (he saw my lament on Facebook) and brought over some barleywine. (Yum! but ten percent alcohol. Yikes!) And Doug's Christmas present arrived in the mail--a basket of peat. (I inspired myself. Some of you might recall that I bought him a basket of peat many years ago and then wrote about. I reread the essay and decided it was time to get another one. But Bord na Mona closes down for the two weeks of Christmas and New Year's, so the basket just arrived.)

Our friend John showed up around 7, and we drank barleywine and Summit and Harp, and fed the fire, and kept an eye on the hockey game, and I didn't think at all about writing until we got up this morning.

And here I am, back at it. I got an email last night from a friend in Duluth who said, "Why do you write the blog if you need the time to write Hack?"

I think the answer is pretty clear: writing the blog is easy. Writing Hack is hard.

And with that, back to Hack.