Why, yes, once again, it is time for Tim's Mood Barometer!

Today's mood is much better than yesterday's. Heather and I made a list of stuff we have to do for the wedding. 'tis a long list, but seeing it all laid out has nevertheless relaxed me. We can do a little bit of it every day, right? Not so impossible. Once I accepted that the wedding is the priority project for the next two months, it began to seem manageable.

I wrote about 1400 words on the Bridge novel last night (my drunk, grief-addled, temporarily irrational protagonist goes wandering into a place he shouldn't), and while I'm not sure they're golden words, they're down on the page, damn it, and they progress the plot.

Flytrap contributor K. Bird Lincoln conducted an interview with my buddy Chris Barzak and Japanese critic and translator Yoshio Kobayashi (who wrote an article about me for Japanese magazine Hayakawa SF a few months ago). It's interesting stuff, especially Yoshio's concept of "sprawl" fiction, things on the edges of the genre that nevertheless radiate out from a common core. (He also says nice things about my work in the interview.)

Work should be good today. Have to run some errands, so I'll get out of the office and into the sunshine a bit. And there's lots to work on, so the days go fast and keep me busy. I shouldn't complain. Things are pretty fine by and large.

You know, most days I feel like this. Annoyances are just annoying, not debilitating, and life mostly seems like a good thing, the future holds promise, and so on and etc. But I get those occasional black-cloud days... and it's probably good that I do. Especially with the novel I'm writing now, which is so much about the darkness, and desperation, and betrayal, and the nagging sense that there must be more to life than the everyday. I certainly understand my characters better after a brush with depression.