Who's on First? Don't know...but I'm picking clovers in left field.

There’s a bit of a disconnect between the portion of my brain known (in neuropsychiatry) as “Executive Function” and the part known (in common parlance) as “Slacker.” Or perhaps it’s more that Executive Function never took Slacker to puppy training school at Petsmart, and now Slacker, when asked to perform, falumps onto the floor belly up and says “no, not fetch, belly rub.”

Anyway, Slacker is evidently asserting passive-aggressive control of the situation this morning, as I sit at an outdoor table at the Baltimore Tea & Coffee Company with my working notebook (from which I am intended to derive where my story is meant to go next) open at my right elbow.

Slacker, though hopeless at home, is easily distracted by the parade of humans coming in and out of BT&C. Ruddy business suit guys who don’t quite have their shirttails all the way tucked, or the pristinely makeupped Asian girls coming and going from Bella—Lifestyle Nail Salon & Spa next door.

Slacker, now that I stop and think about it, has more or less helmed the ship as a lifelong habit. And this explains WHY I didn’t, to my present-day chagrin, learn Latin, geography, and the Encyclopedia Britannica as a kid like my brother.

What I have done, despite Slacker’s insouciant but unquestionable grip on the control-stick, is squeeze out 3.823 books. It’s that last 17.7% of my current effort that Executive Function and Slacker are presently tussling over.

Now, you would think (well, in fact you probably would not think, but you would hope,) that almost-four works of fiction, wrassled from the playful but resolutely ornery jaws of a bad puppy would deserve (if real-life were stories) to turn out to be sparkling with the sort of free-spirited wit that is coveted by the reading and editing world. Actually, what happens is that you get chewy gooey remnants with their squeakers ripped out. Because real-life is not stories, and this outcome is what makes the most real-life logical sense. Still, we carry on...Slacker, Executive Function, Clarence my cross-eyed muse, and I. Because that’s all we can think of to be.

Goal: By the end of today’s work period, only 17% will remain to be written. That’s a few hundred words, that 0.7%. And this blog-post doesn’t contain a one of them.