I am elated to announce that, 20 days after completing the first draft of the novel, I have edited the entirety of American Dream On. Granted, two-thirds of the edits still have to be typed in, and there are some very minor inconsistencies that still have to be resolved. But the second draft is on paper and the third will be ready for distribution soon – maybe even by my goal of New Year’s Day.

This completion was spurred by an incredible wave of motivation that came from approaching the finish line, combined with the last few chapters just being better (thus needing less editing), combined with being sick for the last 48 hours. The sickness has been a bizarre hybrid of sore throat, nausea, and chills that would sound for all the world like a mild flu were it not for the sore throat. I’ve never had a sore throat with the flu that I can recall. Regardless, the illness was quite debilitating yesterday, but prompted a remarkable amount of work both then and today, when it was feeling more strange, achy, and voice-constricting than anything else.

I am in no way pleased to be sick so soon after being sick in Jersey, though I still hold out some hope that this will be more like a 72-hour bug than a week-long wipeout. More importantly, typing in edits is about the easiest thing to do and should go even faster with my current knowledge that this will be all between me and the feedback of actual readers.

For over eight years, I’ve been kicking around the idea for this book. I have shared almost no information about its contents with anyone. In less than two days, people who are not me will get a chance to read it for the first time.

It’s almost enough to make me forget that I’m sick. Almost.

Don’t freak out if you’re getting scary-looking red screens from portions of the Blue Pyramid, especially the front page or the currently archived Women World Leaders Quiz. The site was hacked. It was actually hacked via PHP scripts that were hacked on the Camp Kupugani website (hence why the WWLQ is the epicenter of the problem and has accordingly been archived). Everything should be fine now and even look fine to everyone (i.e. no red screens) soon.

In the meantime, hi, how are you?

We made it to the Bay Area on Friday night for a whirlwind meet-up at Mario’s La Fiesta in Berkeley with a bunch of old friends and co-workers. Then we drove over to Tracy that night, down to Fresno Saturday morning, and have been holed up with the Garin Clan ever since, mostly still unassembled until later this week. I’ve been editing about as much as I can stomach, finally over the halfway point for chapters (51%), but still with about 60% of the pages to go. The later chapters are (apparently much) longer, although there’s one exceptional chapter that helps throw that off, and hopefully won’t require much editing.

New Year’s Day distribution to volunteer readers is looking less likely, but is still sort of the optimistic goal. I’ll keep you (probably excessively) posted.

The only other real news to report from this relaxing tenure with my manuscript and Em’s fam is how heartbroken I was to miss the foot-plus snow in Princeton that came the day after we flew away. The odds are overwhelming that it will be the largest winter storm in Jersey during our two years living there, and while getting snowed in and having to delay this trip would have been less than ideal, editing by the heater between frolics in foot-deep snow is just about my idea of the best living ever. I still can’t think about the storm without getting this gut-turning sadness. As I told Emily, I just don’t think I’ll ever really be happy until I live somewhere like Minnesota or Nevada City or Buffalo or Siberia for at least a year or two, where snow is so commonplace and expected that I don’t have to cling to every prediction and forecast, but can instead have confidence that it will abound. Suffice it to say that had I been born in such an environment, I think I would be a lifelong optimist. Snow makes me that happy.

I hope you’re as happy these holidays as I am in snow. Once I’ve sent out PDF’s of my fully edited tome, I will be too.

For the first time in a long time (maybe since Reykjavik, Iceland?), I will be visiting a previously unvisited town today exclusively via airplane. Not that I expect to get much beyond the airport (which Em would have you believe doesn’t count), but hey, Austin! For a town in Texas, I’ve heard good things.

Thus begins a three-week tour of the West that seems all the more meaningful for our recent absence from said region. We’ll be in the Bay Area tonight (one night only – come see as at Mario’s in Berkeley at 8 PM!), then trekking down to Fresno for Christmas or so, then over to Albuquerque for New Year’s.

The trip is slated to feature family, friends, food, and hopefully the conclusion of my ever-lengthening editing process. Currently at 33% of chapters and 24% of pages, still aiming (perhaps stretching slightly) for a January 1 distribution to volunteer readers.

And now I have to go scoop up the cat, who will be spending the next three weeks in Philly. Oh Pando…

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Holy cow. The Mariners, apparently not satisfied with filling step one of my philosophy on baseball (stock your team with speedsters like Chone Figgins), are apparently a little bit of paperwork away from filling step two, which is to stock your team with top-notch starting pitching.

Cliff Lee is about to be a Mariner. CLIFF LEE!

I haven’t been this excited since the Erik Bedard trade, the last time the M’s landed an ace-level pitcher. Except this time, the trade isn’t going to cripple our team, mostly because our current GM isn’t named Bavasi. Also, Cliff Lee is a proven multi-year talent, while Bedard had had just one great season as the basis of his success.

I mean, did you see Cliff Lee pitch in the postseason? Holy cow. I’m so glad we’re going to still be in the States for (at least most of) the 2010 baseball season.

In other news:

• Emily prompted me to look up Rainbow Brite on Wikipedia tonight, after she jokingly embraced my sarcastic suggestion that we name a child, should we ever have one, Rainbow Bright Clayton. This led me to discover that the cartoon character of ’80’s lore starred in a whopping 13 (thirteen) broadcast episodes, almost exclusively in 1986, yet somehow grossed $1 billion (with a b) in 1980’s dollars from merchandising. Or $77 million an episode. And you think baseball players get paid a lot.
• I have edited 19% of American Dream On’s chapters and 14% of its pages in the last three days, working on a sporadic schedule. It’s exhausting. Completely wiping me out. I was in no way prepared for the sheer physicality required of intensely editing a book this size. At the same time, it’s been going far better than any major editing project I’ve ever undertaken, something I can credit in part to countless hours of editing grant proposals and other paperwork for Glide in my last day job. The amount of work I’m putting in, the amount of change manifest, and the amount of satisfaction I’m getting from the newly emerging draft are all great indicators that I’ve shed my reputation as someone who has trouble with editing. Unfortunately, getting to 100% is a must before anyone sees the thing, so we may be looking closer to New Year’s than Christmas for distribution to first-run readers. My interest in getting feedback is keeping me motivated.
• Plus, I can edit in the Chancellor Green Library. So there’s that. Pretty much anything is worth doing in there, no matter how much energy it takes.
• Spent Saturday in New York City, taking the train all the way from Princeton’s “Dinky” station to downtown Manhattan and (almost all the way) back to see former ‘Deisians for a day of games. Managed to tie for a win in Citadels and run a distant third in Railway Rivals, a stellar railroad game that was West Germany’s 1984 Game of the Year. Hm. I guess you don’t have to take my word for it.
• Cliff Lee!

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

I am pleased to announce that about seven minutes ago, I completed the first draft of American Dream On. Currently clocking in at 145,003 words, it has taken me 7 years, 6 months, and 2 days to write, though over 85% of it was written in the last 100 days.

I will be spending most of the time between now and my flight to Oakland (Friday, 18 December) furiously editing the work so I can have it in good enough shape to distribute to readers by Christmas. Please let me know if you want to read it (and haven’t told me this already).

Actually, I’m going to spend a ridiculous amount of time in the next week celebrating, seeing friends I’ve been neglecting, preparing for the trip, and basking in the glow of 100 days that have salvaged my faith in my life and its potential. But seriously, you should be able to read it by Christmas.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Technically, December just became the most verbose written month of my life.

And it’s been here for eight and a half days.

I have contributed over 35,000 words (~140 pages) to the novel in the last eight and a half days. This is technical, because a decent chunk of that (~9,000 words) was pre-written in one form or another. So the pace is a little misleading, though still blistering. I have been able to process very little other than American Dream On this month.

I have a whopping two chapters to go. The total piece is over 140,000 words and looks like it will be shy of 150,000 in final form. Which is good, because I’m totally not ready to edit a 600 page book. 580 pages should be much more manageable.

I’m a little loopy at this point. But I’ve written 6,500 words in the last 24 hours alone, so I’m going to let myself slide. Slide into bed. And then wake up and eat, sleep, and breathe more novel.

You haven’t seen euphoria till you’ve seen a finished novel from a manic depressive. Sometime this week, watch out people.

And it looks like my streak of being ahead of deadlines will be intact, unless it somehow takes me 5.5 days to finish two chapters after I’ve knocked out 11.5 chapters in 8.5 days (1.35 chapters/day). Not that I’m trying to tempt fate or anything. But this would say I should be done this time Friday morning and that would be just grand by me.

If you can’t tell, I really need to sleep.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Today I was reminded why I came to the East Coast. Sure, I may have written 3 chapters in the last 24 hours and be capping the officially most productive writing period of my entire life (the amount written here has surpassed the entire length of Loosely Based in a slightly shorter timeframe), but this is what I really came for…

Snow!: the view from our porch.

Watching snow makes me happy:

Who needs a Christmas tree?

Starting to stick…

Starting to accumulate…

Pandora is unimpressed:

The world transformed:

Didn’t write a D&C today because the focus was on catching up on chapter 51, left unwritten yesterday because I was hanging out online with the Meppers all night.

But it’s done and now I’m very excited that the number of chapters remaining is now a single digit number, especially since the number of days remaining till deadline is not.

But I want to take this brief break from my writing play-by-play to express my jubilation at this development, fresh from the hot stove. Chone Figgins is a Mariner.

Russ’ heckling of him on my behalf in Anaheim aside, Chone Figgins is exactly the kind of player I love to root for. Essentially, the Rickey Henderson School of Baseball is that which I most enjoy – it’s how I create lineups in baseball video games and it’s how I’d stack a real life team were I ever a GM. Lots of speedy, bunty guys who steal bases, get infield hits and triples, and basically make life a real pain for anyone they’re playing against. It’s my favorite brand of baseball offense.

And with Ichiro and Figgy joining up (and presumably hitting 1-2) in Seattle next season, it seems like the M’s GM is on my wavelength. Already looking quite promising, 2010 just got a little better.

It’s been a strange day.

Last night proved to be a thoroughly redemptive exercise in basketball, as my streaky shooting caught fire and I played the way I always want to play, ever the more grateful for the opportunity to play ball the way I used to when I had 9 consecutive years of unfettered access to a gym. Overnight, I struggled a bit with the writing but managed to crank out the requisite short chapter, #50 of 60 overall. Ten to go in eleven days – still not much margin for error.

But today I decided to continue tearing up the promotional charts for the Book Quiz II, both because it’s a relaxing counterpoint to creative writing and it seems to have made some traction with parts of the blogging community that enjoyed the Book Quiz. But it’s also led me to at least three profound interactions with how said quiz has impacted people.

The first was not a direct impact at all, but made the most stirring impression. This individual posted his Book Quiz results (Ulysses) under the titular banner of “No One Understands Meeeeeeee” in August 2007. Less than a year later, he took his own life. The events are unrelated, of course, other than the obvious cry for help in a blog post about a silly Internet quiz. But it was one of those things that prompted reflection on quizzes as a Rorschach test – there’s nothing particularly isolating or crazy about the Ulysses description (it’s not like he got One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), but he chose to focus on said feelings in relating his titling his post. Given the background color, the blog URL, the general demeanor of all the posts, there were plenty of signs. But it still made me think. And a bit sad that someone who had taken the Quiz was dead in such a manner. Which is silly, because so many people take the quiz and so many people die. But it still felt like something.

The second post to grab my attention was considerably lighter in tone and effect. This was a piece of fanfiction in which the author had envisioned his two chosen characters driving while taking the Book Quiz on the passenger’s laptop. I really enjoyed it, not because of any abiding love of fanfic, but because the depiction of online quiz-taking was so realistic. Well, leaving aside the spottiness of wifi in a moving vehicle. I guess there are those catch-signal-anywhere cards like Brandzy uses.

But the final post was most directly related to the process and mindset of quizzes, their creation, and impact. It was this serious meditation on the impact that the Book Quiz had had on the husband of the blogger who had really enjoyed said quiz. Her husband, a diagnosed sex addict, had gotten Lolita on his second try and was deeply disturbed by the description and its echoes to misperceptions of his disorder. The blogger duly noted my disclaimer (something I had actually considered dropping from the BQ2 because it seemed sort of superfluous when I’m not making fun of countries or states), even to the point of titling the whole post “The Fine Print”. I was pretty moved by the whole narrative, ranging from she and her friends spending much of a hike discussing their BQ results to her husband’s torment at what felt like another rejection of his misunderstood problems. And she comes to a pretty salient conclusion: “When one takes a silly quiz, one agrees to step into the rabbit hole of the mind of the creator and play by the rules of his Wonderland. Taking someone else’s quiz requires that you suspend your disbelief for a few minutes and listen to the advice of the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar.”

Which of course is no small part of the point and something I’ve taken flak for in the past. People have written me upset by the political nature of a given answer or the clearly biased perspective I’m bringing to the table. Some have gone so far as to say that Duck and Cover should just be about cute animals and not have a political message or disagreeable content. Yet I wouldn’t be doing any of these things were it not for their political potential. All meaningful speech, like all meaningful art, is political – and here I mean “political” in the broadest possible sense of that which attempts to change others minds about society or its implications, not the petty squabbling of factions or status quo powers. I remember someone getting infuriated at me for saying that too, but I don’t see how any other perspective is coherent. Everything is trying to change someone’s mind about something. That’s the point of us all being here together instead of on our own individual planets.

Which is not to say that I wanted the blogger’s husband to feel bad about himself or the suicidal person to feel more alone. So maybe I’m failing in my political aims. Though it must be said that no small part of the aim of the quizzes is to bring lightness into people’s day, or just to stir up thought and reflection. Which I think all three examples achieved, in some way, to say nothing of the countless mundane posts celebrating the accuracy or decrying the randomness of the quiz just taken. If nothing else, the quizzes seem to have a remarkable ability to prompt introspection, which is maybe the most political aim I’ll ever espouse.

The more we think, especially about our own attitudes, perspectives, and approaches, the more hope we have.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

The sample size is only 41 hours, but December’s been awfully good so far.

I wrote another 16 pages last night (early this morning), bringing December to a startling 8,149 word count (~32.5 pages) in just two overnight sessions, or 45% of the total from the entire last month combined. It appears I’m prepared to take this deadline seriously. Eleven chapters remain in twelve days, so this is no time to get complacent, but I’m feeling quite good about the whole picture as it’s shaping up for the home stretch. For what it’s worth, last night really felt like work, too, which most of this book hasn’t. So maybe the writing will seem forced (though I doubt it from a quick review), but if nothing else it’s a sign I can struggle through not feeling 100% motivated (which I felt the night before). I know I’ve been going on about the writing process a lot lately, but it feels something like a sport… and this month I appear ready to play through any pain that might arise.

Speaking of sports and pain, I turned in perhaps my worst session of basketball in my life on the last night of November, but am looking for a shot at redemption in tonight’s closing game of the end-of-year 3-on-3 IM season. Our team’s 5-2 and tied for second (with the team we play tonight) and I am ready to not overthink my shots, which I’ve concluded was responsible for my something like 0-8 performance on Monday. Nevertheless, the night of crappy basketball led to an overnight of amazing writing, so I’m prepared to make that trade again if need be.

Last night rounded out the first of four debate semesters in my tenure as Rutgers coach, though the team may scrounge together the funds to send a team down to UMBC this weekend while I pound away furiously on the keyboard in the office here. The team made me a card and debated a joke-round about me possibly regretting my decision to coach at Rutgers that kept the mood light and hopefully optimistic at the end. I am, in sum, quite satisfied with the success of the team after one term, recognizing that the first semester was always going to be the hardest and it being among the most successful semesters Rutgers has ever had on APDA is a promising sign.

The Book Quiz II is starting make the rounds, fueled in part by a campaign I’ve launched to contact a bunch of people who posted the original and get them to take the sequel. I really should have done this with the Country Quiz II when it launched, but you may recall that November/December 2007 was among the most intense times of my life, probably the hardest two-month period of my day job career outside of April/May 2005. It’s interesting to note that said quiz also was launched around Thanksgiving, though I failed to make the strategic decision to hold it till after the holiday, instead choosing to launch it on the Wednesday before.

Okay, that’s creepy – I just realized that both quiz sequels were completed precisely on the day before Thanksgiving. Bizarre.

Anyway, it appears most people (at least those taking it so far) consider themselves more “old school” than “with it”, as books from the older chain off the first question are vastly outpacing the latter. So far the leaders are Much Ado About Nothing, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter, Romeo and Juliet, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Good Earth, Little Women, Treasure Island, The Canterbury Tales, and The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, at twelfth overall, is the top answer linked from the second answer to the first question.

This may be unsurprising, however, given a Facebook/blogging gap that seems to be opening up. After perusing so many blogs that were initially taken in by the Book Quiz, it seems that the surviving blogs from the last five years belong disproportionately to older Internet users, consisting roughly of people my age or older. Meanwhile, the people currently in compulsory education seem not to have picked up on the blogging habit, preferring instead to focus on shorter media like the endlessly discussed Facebook and Twitter. Mesco has urged relentlessly that I create a Facebook application for the quizzes, something I’ve long aspired to do, but my options now are mortgage all my time learning how to code one or use a cookie-cutter application machine that doesn’t even know how to process the BP quiz format. So it goes. Someday, maybe after I bank two or three books, you’ll be able to get my quizzes on Facebook too. And then everyone will be all Infinite Jest and Freakonomics.

An interesting byproduct of the BQ2’s popularity has also been a bit of a revival in the book-referral-ads that are in the corner of the answer pages, exhorting people to buy the book they were just associated with on Amazon. I haven’t sold a book in a long time through one of these, but someone just bought not one, not two, but three copies of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue through one such link, in what I can only assume was complete fulfillment of their Christmas shopping. So just in case you think I’m not doing any good with my website, I’ll have you know I just pocketed $1.74 of what is rightfully Sarah Palin’s money. Not quite inspiring Michael Steele to condemn her, but it’s not my fault if he doesn’t take his cues from APDA demo rounds.

Man, I really meant to get around to talking about my fabulous Thanksgiving break down in DC, but I was on too much of an Internet moratorium to write about it at the time and I’m too caught up in the heady present to write about it now. I may flesh out the details, but suffice it to say that there were great friends, a fabulous view of the stormy city, lively debates, spicy corn soup, Settlers, a scorching Ticket to Ride victory, more than a hundred pages of War and Peace, an unexpected meet-up with Anna, Chipotle, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, and Waffle House. Yeah. It was like my birthday for four days or something.

If only two-years-ago me could see me now.