Still in the process of transcribing old journals! Heres an entry from April 2011 that is perhaps one tiny bit better today: I have some sort of inner existential writing crisis every other week. The format and the structure of the hundreds of pages I have spread across a dozen files deeply embedded within each other undergoes continual radical shifts and it makes me feel like I’m swimming in a sea with not only no shore in sight but no shore at all. Then I decide I only want to write short pieces for periodicals. Then I think about cold calling editors and it’s worse than spitting in the wind, it’s vomiting in the wind. Then I make a rigid writing schedule and stick to it perfectly for 3 days. Then I feel I need more discipline and consult my friend who was raised by nuns and then I feel like a wild squiggle she has tried unsuccessfully to flatten into a line. And then I decide to write crazy unedited from the heart and it reads like the diary of a 7th grade girl in solitary confinement who really needs the love of functioning parents and medication. Then I decide I will be more regular on my blog. Then I decide I will only write by hand, then only in the morning after I’ve been to the gym, then only for deadlines. Anyway, it’s a mess. I write the way Blaine’s brother mowed the lawn that one time. I mow the lawn that way too, when I can get the mower to start. It’s like trying to coat the entire house by spitting paintballs through a straw. But I have to give myself credit for not stopping anyway, even in the face of this incredible mess and everything that’s fallen through cracks and into ruts and is unfinished and maybe unfinishable and the ineffable sadness I feel about the disorder of it all. But I do, I’ve noticed, keep going anyway and I have no plans to stop whatever form (or lack thereof) I end up taking.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 15:18:13 +0000
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