[An open letter to the Damned Fraternity]

Dear Wormwood and Friends,

Some of you may have been reading about how other bloggers have been diligently working on their Notes for the past six months, have their drafts nicely in order, and are now sitting upon thirty to forty typed pages of legal wisdom ready for various stages of submission.

And if you're a member of the Fraternity of the Damned, you know how we feel about those people. [1]

Well, Fraternal Brothers and Sisters, let me say that you're not alone. Some of us have Monday deadlines and have barely started the writing process. Some of our notes have order that could only be divined by mad prophets and chaos theoreticians. Some of us have been absorbed by dread, fear, simple lack of care or a surplus of better things to do with our lives, and thus have shoved this work aside the way like a smelly pile of festering dishes. (Someone else's dishes, a common problem if you live in my dorm.)

Actually, Wormwood, I'm not that worried: this is how the process works for me. Major projects have four or five day period of mandatory work-avoidance which come before a burst of creativity resulting in output of unparalleled adequacy. I know that while I've been playing solitaire, doing laundry, or researching how to defragment a paging file, some part of the back of my head has also been writing the Note.

Now I have merely to get that muse to vomit forth her ponderings into my conscious mind. She's normally summoned by adrenaline (check), lack of sleep (check), and quanities of coffee that swing commodities markets. [2] Today's choice is the fine "Hamilton's Blend," so named because I'm certain that if someone were to check their coffee machine, coffee beans at some point had something to do with the blend of stuff that's in it.

All other projects have either been completed or back-burnered until Monday. Now is the time, fellow Fraternals, for the rough draft to commence. We either get this damn'd thing out of the way, or let it conquer us.

Are you with me?

[Ed.-- There follows an ear-shattering silence and the chirping of crickets.]

[1]: They're lovely people, as we all know. Good as all get out, the type of folks to whom the universe should give only its best at every turn. But when deadlines loom, members of the Fraternity, we all know that there are places of pitch, oil and brimstone that we really wish were reserved for them.

[2]: Someday an enterprising reader is going to ask me about my deadlines and start purchasing the appropriate coffee futures. Whether or not this would constitute insider trading is someone else's Note, and they're welcome to it.