Plan B sounded good. Plan B involved waiting until next Fall to graduate and to take the extra time to get more stories published (maybe even self publish a book of short stories) so that I might have better writing credentials when I leave this school. And I’d have extra time to make my thesis come into its own.

Plan B sounded logical…until it met the scrutiny of my advisor. Deadlines are good. Writing work usually happens in the heat of a ticking clock. The best tricks are played in the last minute. I know this…I just try and convince myself otherwise, sometimes.

So now it’s Plan C. Plan C is basically the same as Plan A, only it’s more like Plan A than Plan A was and it follows Plan B.

Plan C has a deadline: March 9th. I need a draft of my epic poem by then. That means some 42 odd days (we’ll round down to 40) of writing. Let’s pretend the end product is 200 pages (I have no IDEA how long it will be). That’s 5 pages a day – maybe around 1500 words a day.

That’s a little over a month of frenzied writing.

So this is my warning/apology that I might not always be available until that date. I might not answer every email or be able to go out and drink. I might go a little crazy. I might howl and lope off into the woods never to return…

But like the priest in the Exorcist says, Thank God my will is weak. So I’ll probably answer some of the emails and drink some of the time. But if not…you all know why.

So here’s to March 9th – a month, to the day, after Ash Wednesday to tell the story about the Ash Angel – and hip-hip-here-I-go…

Don’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDownDon’tLookDown