Back in circulation

Since I submitted the first draft of my novel to the National Arts Council on Tuesday (they're supporting me with a grant), I've been creeping slowly back into my social life: long catch-ups over meals with friends whom I've had to put off seeing for the last few months, a couple of work-related meetings and emails, reading longform journalism and short stories again, and even watching Obama be funny at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

It's also nice not to feel I have to churn out 2,000-3,000 words of prose everyday.

Friends have been asking how it feels like to emerge from what I've called my "self-imposed writing hermitry". I have two parts to my answer:

• I need to catch up on all the internet memes, viral videos and online gossip of the past few weeks. It was only after Tuesday's submission that I allowed myself to watch, in good conscience, not only the Obama one but also the putatively epic video of a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba chasing a duck (which I found not-so-epic, perhaps it'd been over-hyped and over-linked by the time I got to it), and it was only on Wednesday night at a friend's place that I understand what the Jawbone UP is (no, I'm not getting one).
• It's nice to be able to drink in the company of friends again, instead of timidly nursing a beer or glass of wine in front of an imperiously glowing iMac screen.

The other question people have been asking is what am I going to do now. The answer for the month of May is:

• Do some paid work. The National Arts Council grant is something I'm deeply grateful for, but it doesn't pay the mortgage.
• Prepare the two talks I've agreed to give towards the end of the month at the MyQueenstown symposium on social memory and development, and at the National Museum's Historia SG history seminar.
• Write a couple of short stories that I've promised to people.
• Revise the draft of the novel massively, viz. the opening chapters, the entire last one-third, and various narrative and character arcs.

Oh boy. I believe fellow writer @davechua's exact words (for his schedule and mine) were: "No rest for the wicked."