Saturday, June 26, 2010

Need a Little Patience, Yeeeaah...
Just a Little Patience, Yeeeaah

Hello my dear friends -

Knowing that I'd previously stated my Mother of All Posts would be done by the end of June, I thought long and hard about how to inform you that it's still going to be a while before I publish it ("it" being my Lost series finale write-up, in case you're not following me). Seeing as how there are only five days left in the month and I haven't even started pulling anything together, it clearly ain't gonna happen. What's more, with my summer commitments heating up and a trip to the east coast planned in the near future, I don't think I'll get a chance to make any headway on it for a while.

You might be thinking that this delay stemmed from me needing to finish my manuscript, but that was actually only part of the hold-up. (And yes, thank you Sweet Lord Baby Jesus, as of June 15 it was ALL turned in, and now I'm nervously awaiting my first round of edits from my publisher.) The full story is that my tardiness has more to do with a long list of crappy things that I've been having to deal with over the past few weeks, and since they're pretty personal and private, you're just going to have to trust me when I say that I've been in no shape or mood to tackle what I really want to be my best Lost post of all time. If I don't have fun writing it, you're not going to have fun reading it -- that much I know.

So, there's some good news and some bad news. Bad news first, always!

Bad news:
1) I think it's gonna be another month before I can finish my exhaustive take on "The End," since I haven't even started it and I'm going to be tied up with other things until mid-July. And that means that those of you who were annoyed at me for taking this long are going to be even more annoyed at me now. Sorry! I'll buy you a Dharma Beer to make up for it if you're ever in Chicago.

Good news:
1) Lost isn't coming back. (Hmm, actually, that should've gone in the Bad News camp, huh?) My point is, the series isn't going anywhere, so it's not like there's a new episode looming in the distance that I need to get in front of. In a weird way, I'm glad I've had so much time to digest what I thought about the finale -- my piece is bound to be better now than it would've been had I attempted to sift through my emotions a month ago.

2) Mentally, I finally feel like I'm getting ready to jump in with both feet and write this bad boy. There is NO WAY I could've done it immediately after my book was completed -- I don't know what I was thinking before when I figured I could crank it out so shortly afterward, even if all of the other personal stuff hadn't gone awry. I was totally drained, and the last place I wanted to be was in front of my laptop. It's a weird thing, writing. For something like this final Lost post, I have to be in just the right mood. I think I'm getting there, because last week I rewatched the finale for the first time since it aired. And I've been leaving myself little audio recordings (thanks, iPhone) with ideas of concepts to cover and song lyrics to use for section headings. So the wheels, they are a-turnin'...

3) By the time I post the finale recap I will definitely be able to (finally) spill some details about my book. And then I think you'll realize the scope of what I was dealing with and why the writing process made me lose ten pounds and age ten years. (I'm rapidly gaining the weight back by eating every high-fat thing in sight, rest assured. For example, just two hours ago I had a World Class Chocolate waffle cone from Dunkin' Donuts -- and it was awesome.)


The bottom line is that there is TOTALLY more good news than bad news in what I wrote above, right? RIGHT?

Seriously, though, I really want to thank you guys for being so patient. June 2010 will go down as one of the worst -- if not THE worst -- months of my life, and I am ready for it to be over and for things to get back to semi-normal. Thanks for sticking with me. And please do not holler at me about the fact that I will be writing several times a week over at 'According to e' before I get my final Lost post up. As I alluded to above, writing about Lost is a different process for me than writing about other things: I'll crank out 'A to e' stuff in the morning (whereas I've never written about Lost in the AM) and those posts are going to be really short and will take me zero time to think through, whereas we all know that's not going to be the case with my Long Live Locke masterpiece.

So I hope you'll join me over at 'A to e' in the meantime -- I have a new post up talking about what I intend to cover there going forward.

Have a great July... and if all goes well, I'll be back with "The End" before it's over.

Until then,
- e

PS - I hope this post didn't come off like I think that anyone's sitting on pins and needles and holding themselves and rocking back and forth and drooling, anxiously awaiting my final post. I know you all have other things going on, too, and are out enjoying your summers. But I have received quite a number of emails asking me "WHERE IS IT????", so I felt like I should at least address the delay.