Test Tube Beneficiary: The Final Push

Until Tuesday, progress on “Test Tube Beneficiary,” my short story in progress, had come to a halt while I tried to make some headway on the novel. On Tuesday, though, I brought my MacBook on the train and got a few hundred words written on TTB. On Wednesday morning, I rewrote the last couple of paragraphs I had written on the train home the day before, and realized that while I knew how the story was to end, I had no idea how I was going to get there.

I went to the gym over lunch and had a decent run (listening to I Should Be Writing on the iPod, natch), and by the time I was done with my shower, I had the roadmap to the finish. I stood dripping wet in the locker room with a towel wrapped around my waist, tapping away on the crackberry to get it all down in an email to myself (using Gmail so none of it ends up on the firm’s server).

Between the train home and what I wrote after the kids got to bed, I knocked out 2300 words yesterday. I did more on the train this morning. I’ll be done by the end of the weekend, if not before. Then — and this is the key, this is one of the big lessons from reviewing all those rejection slips — I’m going to have to edit the thing. But not before I open up a nice bottle of wine and celebrate a little.