Brain time restrictions

Dateline: in the Shire, Indy, 25 August 2005

Allergies are a complete bitch, and getting bitchier the older I get.

I regret ever making fun of my Dad getting drowsy in the afternoon, especially in the summer.

What allergies mean to me is that I have about 8 good hours of thinking time each day, if I start at 0600. After 2pm the brain just starts to wander. Doesn't mean I can't give speeches, or conduct meetings, or brainstorm, or be generally charming. I just don't like creative writing--or blogging.

All my fancy way of excusing myself yet again today from the usual blog format of working through a list of articles. Tuesday and Wednesday were given over to editing the China piece for Esquire, and that sits with Mark now.

Wed and Thurs were given over to the first serious draft of a book proposal for a volume I would write with Steve DeAngelis (working title, "America Resilient: Beating Terrorism, Staying Competitive, and Innovating Our Way to a New World Over"). I had cranked about 500 words a week ago, just to get a feel for the intro, then spent time reviewing various Enterra stuff to make sure I was getting the gist of how they like to explain enterprise resiliency. Then dicked around for a while longer, just cogitating and practicing in my head. Then I got the itch late on Wednesday, tried on Thursday, dicked around some more. Then I got up Friday and it finally clicked for me and I'm typing all morning like a demon, with the clock moving incredibly slowly (funny how that works).

When I finally look up, it's 8 pages and almost 4,000 words. I give it a rest tonight and then read it through tomorrow again early and fire it off to Steve, Mark Warren, and agent Jennifer Gates. I don't know if Putnam will consider it an option book, but naturally we'll pass it past Neil Nyren first. Not sure if it's broad enough for Putnam, but maybe the business imprint at Penguin would have interest. If we pass those bailiwicks without interest, then I think we go the usual route of sending out to multiple publishers.

I must admit, I was skeptical I would have enough to say in a joint volume such as this, but the more I got into the proposal, the more psyched I got, realizing that I'm always truncating what I could be ultimately saying (even after two books totalling about 300,000 words) simply because the subject matter, especially if it's tilted in one direction (military, development, business), is basically infinite. PNM was all so mil focused, and BFA came out surprisingly development focused [at least, in my mind], so this book would be a recasting more strictly in the direction of business, giving me a chance to include a lot of material/stories that I just couldn't get into either PNM or BFA.

Then I think of Stan Crock from BusnessWeek (in his review) saying it was too bad PNM didn't have more business-oriented stuff (especially drawing upon my work with Cantor Fitzgerald and the original NewRuleSets.Project), and I'm thinking: this is the book to do it in.

Plus, partnering with someone else who's like me (but in a different sector) is the cheap and easy way to extend your brain into new spheres. I mean, with all these emails from law students and law professors, I'm starting to think an international law version of this whole package would make sense at some point. Maybe an educationally-oriented one, and so on.

Anyway, I have a load of articles I want to blog. Gotta run to the mall right now on family affairs (I fear I will be sitting through a movie about penguins having babies while others see more interesting fare), but at least they canc'd the cross-country practice today after four straight nights of running (a good 13-15 miles total, which was just enough of a shock for this 43-year-old who gave up daily running about 5 years ago). Otherwise, I doubt I would stay awake even through this sex-filled romp (do penguins' nipples get erect in all that antarctic frost?).

Tomorrow I promise to get up early, review and then fire off the book proposal, get to my backlog of articles, and then finish my backlog of Ask Toms and write my newsletter for Monday, all the while hoping Warren doesn't send me back anything until at least Saturday night.

The rest of the weekend, I suspect, will be spent in my mother-in-law's pool.

Don't feel the allergies there.