Pages done on the novel. Paragraphs done for a story. Good times.
You know, I was going to make a bitchery comment about the new slam season getting underway next month (three memorized poems are required? WTF is that? To compete?) But I got a shitload of work done tonight and I just don’t feel like being petty.
But. I did write a poem tonight. I’ve set up the mic to record. But I want to sleep on it and look at it again tomorrow. It’s a protest poem. And I don’t write protest poems.
Maybe for a reason, maybe not: I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about being a hermit. I need to do it to get work done (and it’s getting done), but I also have a real urge to go and do things.
Been thinking quite a bit about the local poetry scene for some reason, too. I guess I just can’t go back to the good old days. I’m learning to let things go. And honestly, I’ve been thinking what makes people poets, why there’s a line between realness and not realness. Between having a name or having something to really say.
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I didn’t do any work yesterday. It was a bad day all around, from spilling coffee on my laptop and killing my keyboard in the morning to me opening my big mouth and saying dumb shit in the evening (and that’s all I want to say about it.)
Today, albeit slowly, I’m working on the novel. I’ve got a beginning going. A few pages, but it’s there, a setpiece to get things moving along, and I feel like I’ve got a good vision of what’s ahead.
Yeah, basically I’m just posting right now in order to procrastinate writing.
Once it is realized
that even between the closest people
infinite distances continue to exist
a wonderful living side by side
can grow up
if they succeed in loving the distance between them
that allows each to see the other
whole against the sky.
Strangely enough, all I’ve been doing this week, after a self-imposed week off, was work on things. This weekend, I did a bunch of character/world building and writing on the novel.
There’s a strange dichotomy here, because on the one hand, I should be just feeling exhausted and shut down from Clarion, but I’m really more excited about writing than anything else. I want to use all the stuff I’ve learned, still processing everything. I want to just keep going.
But then there’s a part of me that thinks, “Jesus Christ, am I really just writing because of some self-delusion that I can actually make this work?”
Or maybe the biggest thing I learned over the 6 weeks is that the crap comes first and that’s okay. I had some issues with this over the weekend, as I was trying to write an opening scene for the novel. I just told myself to write it. That’s what I learned during my last story of the workshop: finish it. And even if I couldn’t pull all the tricks out of my hat, and I still can’t, goddammit I’m gonna write this bitch out.
My brother, god bless him, actually asked me this weekend, “Well, did you meet anybody, or was this just a waste of money?” I’m going to let you talk that one out for me.
Yesterday was basically the day for me not to feel well. At all. I tried to go back to running in the morning after taking most of the week off, and my body rebelled.
By the way, I’ve really been thinking that I’d love to go back to reviewing records, but I really don’t want to be going to shows, unless they’re major concerts that I can get reimbursed for. In a lot of ways, I miss that stuff.
There really have been things going on in my mind this week, but I’ll make a cut. So if you don’t want to read about it, you don’t have to. Or if you’ve already heard the rambling, you know.
Work work work. Drafting two stories. Thinking a lot about the novel, but waiting to get this energy out for these stories before I get my brain into novel mode.
But this? Nice.
I broke down and worked on a story last night. I mean, it’s 12 o’clock somewhere, right?
And what am I doing this morning? Firing up Word.
It’s like crack.
Last night we met up at Crown & Anchor for Mikey’s Going-Away-To-Macau pints, and it was a warm breezy night.
At one point during the evening, a shuttle van rolls up, and the driver gets out to open the door, one of those big levelled things to hold disabled folks. A lady in a wheelchair “drives” onto the platform, is lowered down, and rolls right in. Just awesome.
Last day of my break.
