Wed, 12 Jan 2005
The writing life, part 102
Yanked from the sleep of the dead by a doorbell, I
grab my dressing-gown and shamble up the front
hall, managing not to trip over Frigg (who as usual is running
ahead of me but keeps stopping to look over her shoulder at the
food ape to make sure I'm following). Opening the door, I am
engulfed by a gale. The postman -- for it is he -- thrusts a
piece of paper and a pen at me: "sign here". In the pre-dawn
twilight I slowly realize that I'm not wearing my glasses and my
right eye (the night-blind one) isn't reading, while to my left
eye (the myopic one) the page is a gray blur. The porch light
would help if it wasn't an elderly fluorescent bulb that takes
half an hour to reach full brightness. Hail rattling around my
ankles I hastily scribble something that might approximate an
end-of-signing autograph and then grab the package and retreat
indoors.
When I scrabble my way through the packaging I discover that it
contains the page
proofs for "The Hidden Family", and I've got about a week to turn
them around and get them back in the post. This happens to be the
middle of my week for lying around recovering from "Glasshouse";
so it goes. Ominously, the arrival of "The Hidden Family" means
that "Accelerando" is probably already on its way towards me, so
if I don't get this one out of the way fast I'm likely to find
myself in a proofreading train wreck.
I do what anybody in their right mind would do: I go back to bed.
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