the fabulosity limit

So I’m struggling like mad with a book that is due in about twenty minutes’ time, and I hate it and it hates me and I’m convinced that it’s going to be the crappiest book in the history of crappy books, and yet I’ve got to finish the damn thing because see above about “due in about twenty minutes’ time.”

I was thinking about this while I walked the dogs this morning, and it dawned on me that part of the reason I’m having such a hard time with the book is that I desperately don’t want it to be crappy.  Naturally.  But the thing is, if I’m honest, “good” isn’t really enough.  I want it to be fabulous.  Not just garden-variety fabulous, either.  I want this book — as I want everything I turn my hand to, and certainly everything I write — to be white-hot incandescent illuminate-the-world-and-endure-forever fabulous.

Being a realistic sort of girl, I am aware that this is unlikely.

Being a neurotic writer, I immediately start thinking about why this is unlikely, and begin to contemplate all the writers I know whose version of this book I’m working on would automatically be far more fabulous than anything I would ever write, and that’s the reason they all have careers that are more fabulous than mine, and lives that are more fabulous than mine, and generally, I determine in the course of about 18 seconds that there is an uneven distribution of fabulosity, which is a limited commodity, and I am not a member of the  Fabulosity 1% and fuck everything sideways with a rusty garden weasel, why do I even bother, I’m just going to make a fool of myself anyway, what the fuck do I think I’m doing and who the hell do I think I’m fooling?

I stopped walking and thought “Well, hell.  You’ve got a book to write regardless.  What’re you going to do about it?  You’re 98% of the way to a serious case of the fuckits and you don’t have the time for that, you’re on deadline.”

I looked at the dogs, who were whuffling and snuffling and pissing on things in a matter-of-fact, first-thing-in-the-morning sort of businesslike dog way.  ”What’m I gonna do, dogs?”

The dogs ignored me, the panoply of rich aromas and excretory opportunities afforded by the great outdoors clearly being more interesting and important than the self-important wailings of human beings.   Dogs are sensible creatures.

So, in the absence of input from my trusted advisors, I decided that today at least, there is unlimited fabulousness.  Endless reservoirs of weapons-grade awesomeness, in fact.  Inexhaustible supplies of stupendous and inspired and perspicacious.   There is no fabulosity limit, and in the immortal words of P-Funk, “to each his reach and if I don’t cop it ain’t mine to have.”

That goes for you, too.  Just noting.

And with that, I have a book to write.