Great Gawd Awmity

Whew. I just finished jamming out one of the longest non-fiction articles I've ever written in my life, the kind of magazine-style prose that makes newspaper editors sit up and shout "CONOVER, YOU SUCK!"

And maybe they're right. I'm not sure. I didn't want to write this story so long. I'm sick of long stories and constantly trying to find ways to write things shorter... or at least break them down into more digestible bites.

But sometimes you have to listen to the story itself, I think. How does it want to be told?

This story, a year-in-the-life of two local neo-pagan groups, wanted to unfold. It resisted all my attempts to pack it into an economical space, sprouting new shoots every time I tried to prune it back.

I don't know how the bosses will look upon it. But I figure if I'm going to walk in and say "I want to publish a ridiculously long story on a topic that's just bound to make many of our faithful readers uncomfortable," I might as well offer them the professional courtesy of giving them some time to read the material.

Mark my words: This is the last big project I want to do all freaking year. Just this one story, and then I will happily return to little baubles about new research at the marine biology lab, stuff like that.

What a maroon.