Looks like female singer-songwriters like Lucinda Williams and Tift Merritt are making up the most significant soundtrack thus far for my baseball novel-in-progress. I guess their music and voices help take me back almost 100 years to the setting of the book.

I've got one scene left in chapter two, a flashback that's going to be kind of painful to write. So far, I've been kind of stretching myself, writing about things that I normally don't write or talk about much except in private -- religion, faith, life and death, personal philosophies, the significance of family.

I think my approaching fatherhood may have something to do with that added depth. I like to think so. I look forward to my son or daughter reading this novel when it's done (and once the little one can read, of course!), moreso than the other novels I've done. This one means the most to me already, actually, and I'm only 25 pages or so into it.

Another big part of its significance is that it's the first big writing project that I've really discussed in depth with Elizabeth, and she's been hugely supportive of me (I usually have trouble discussing what I'm writing with people -- which is why I write in here so damn much!). I couldn't have gotten so much done already without her there. She's the best. And tonight we're going to go see Karen Joy Fowler at Quail Ridge Books and get inspired all over again. Later!

Now Playing:
"Essence," Lucinda Williams

Now Reading:
Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler

Today's Quote:
"So if heaven is a baseball game, what's hell like?"

"Beats me, Coach. Maybe it's just something preachers and parents made up to scare kids for all I know."

George gave a start. Having lived through a certain kind of hell already in his lifetime, an experience that was only a fraction as long as his mother's and father's and so many more of his people, he'd had the same thought for most of his life.

"Sometimes I wonder if hell isn't what people do to each other when they're alive," he murmured, the words slipping out of his mouth before he could stop them.