Another week in the bag, another few thousand words on the page. I finished today’s writing on page 42, which has a happy significance for me.
You sci-fi geeks out there won’t need me to explain this, but my wife will.  Seeing as she reads this pile from time to time, it’s better if I don’t leave her in the dark.
42 is, of course, the answer to the Grand question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, as posited by the late, great Douglas Adams in the first book of his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.  However, of course, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, is rather ill-defined, and so he defined it in the third book, Life, the Universe, and Everything.  The question, it turned out, was (is?) “What do you get when you multiply six times nine?”  This nonsense question-and-answer was representative of the absurdity of both the book series itself and, in proper artistic fashion (life imitating art and all that – wait, no, I got that backward – wait, no, I didn’t), of the whole of existence as the author himself saw it.
I’m conjecturing, of course, but I think it’s fair to say that Adams, himself an avowed atheist, saw the world as a whole sort of general mish-mash, a more or less random collection of atoms, molecules, compounds and quarks that followed their own rules about how to behave, even if those rules are indecipherable to the best of us.  Nine times six equals forty-two?  Well, that’s just life, innit?
Anyway, Douglas Adams was and is one of the only authors whose work I could read anywhere, anytime, and under any circumstances and both a) enjoy it and b) learn something about myself or the world (usually myself). He spins a haberdashery of a yarn, and he’s funny at the same time.  His characters are so distinctive — each with their bizarre individual quirks, yet each one choice with Adams’s signature wit and pacing.  He’s kind of my writing spirit guide, and every time I’ve tried my hand at writing, especially when I practice informal writing (like ye Olde blarg), I find myself gravitating toward emulating his style.  It makes me nostalgic for a time when I was first discovering that literature could be not only enjoyable, but could actually impact a person’s life.  Believe it or not, high-school me could barely give a sharknado about Shakespeare or Fitzgerald or really any instance of the written word.
But we grow up, don’t we?  We grow up and we branch out, and as I travel down this lonely road of writing my first (okay, that’s optimistic, but times like these call for a bit of optimism so, DonDraper it, I’m gonna be optimistic) novel, those divergent paths are catching my eye more and more.  I am painfully aware that, as much as I enjoy writing in this style I’ve modeled on the late Mr. Adams, it’s exactly that, an emulation rather than my own creation.  Does it work?  I suppose that’s ultimately up to my readers to judge (and I have at least 25 of you out there now; thanks for following!).  I feel like it does.  But use like an Elvis impersonator can only throw so many pelvic thrusts or “awuh-huh”s about before he begins to feel a little empty inside, so too I feel the creeping sensation that this style of mine may actually ring a bit hollow. It’s not a thing that needs addressing right this minute, or maybe even not on this novel, but it’s starting to nag at me in a way that is obviously not going to stop anytime soon.  I’m probably over thinking it – I over think everything. 
No favorite passage today; I got the writing done but none of it really sang for me.  It felt utilitarian, and I don’t even know if what I wrote today will survive the first edit.  The character in question is turning out to be awfully mean and I just don’t know if it makes sense for him to be quite so mean.  Vindictive.  A villain doesn’t make sense if he’s only a villain for the sake of getting in the hero’s way — he has to make sense and work as a character in his own right.  Gotta stay focused on that.  I think I need to bring this guy back to center a little bit.
Okay, enough of this ramble.  When I return to the project I’ll be moving on past page 42.
Instead of my own favorite passage, I’ll leave with one from Adams, a useful one for writers everywhere:

“The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.

Funny, I seem to recall DA using a lot more punctuation than that.