Raining today. Misting,…

Raining today. Misting, really. It's amazing how much a little rain affects them out here -- my professor was 20 minutes late to class 'cause of traffic. Makes me wonder what they'd do with snow. :-)

Been going through and trying to fix the broken links in the journal (many thanks to Kristen for finding them for me). Should be done with that today. If anyone feels exceptionally bored and wants to hunt for broken links in the rest of my pages, that's always welcome help.

> I finally finished the second set of revisions to Interruptions today. I'm not sure what I feel about them -- some of the changes were clearly necessary -- others...dunno. I asked some friends to look at them -- we'll see what they think. I often have this problem with revisions -- the language somehow feels more stilted. One of my early stories, "The Queen o' Fairies, She Called Me" was, I think, a much better story before I revised it. Not that the problems weren't there -- just that I didn't do a good job of fixing them. *sigh* A skill I have to learn, I know.

Class today was frustrating. We're doing close reading of poetry, which means that we end up analyzing each word and phrase and comma to death. And yes, in some cases it really helps you appreciate the poem, but I do feel that a lot of the connections we're making are more than a little dubious. This is what English grad students do all the time; it's part of the reason I decided to do a M.F.A. instead of a Ph.D. Still not sure that was the right decision -- I may even go do the Ph.D. afterthis -- well, we'll see. No need to decide yet, though I think my advisor thinks I should transfer out this year into a Ph.D. program. Not going to. So far, I'm enjoying this year too much. :-)

Today, at 5, there's an open mike reading on campus. I really should go and try to get a spot to read. I'm terrified by reading my work out loud. It's odd, because I positively enjoy reading other people's work, and I like public speaking, and I'm obviously willing to put my work up here for the perusal of thousands -- yet I get positively ill when I go up to read my own work, even with a sympathetic crowd, which I'm sure this one will be. Guess I just have to bite down and learn to do it, though -- if the book does well I'm going to have to do a lot of it.

Not sure what to work on now -- I've got about 3 1/2 hours to kill. I'm going to let Interruptions sit for a week while people crit it. Can't write the Puritan letters 'cause I need the magazines (complicated) and I left them at home. So I can either work on the novel or the novella. The novel is more important long term, but it scares me, and the novella is currently feeling very dull, but is due next week. Ick.

Been reading Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind. I don't like it as well as her earlier Writing Down the Bones, but I loaned out my copy of that and it never came back. :( So anyway, one thing she said in there struck me -- that you often hear people saying they want to be writers, or artists -- even hugely successful people, businessmen, doctors. But you never hear a writer say they want to be something else. A richer writer, sure, a more successful one, a better one. It's as if once you've tasted the high that writing can give you, nothing can match that -- so you give up job, security, shut out friends and family, turn into a troll living in a dank cave and snarling at the computer, bitch constantly about blocks and deadlines and starving -- and you wouldn't even consider giving it up. The ultimate drug. And if you do give it up, you become depressed or alcoholic or worse. Even if you keep the job and family and friends, you must do some writing -- maybe even in secret. Somehow you have to feed that habit or you'll go mad.

All right, perhaps I'm exaggerating a little. Perhaps not. :-)

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