Writer's Block and going coastal

I just read a book, "How to write a lot", I think. It tersely pointed out that academic writers, especially dissertation writers--unlike novelists and poets, except for all in one november novelists--do not suffer writer's block, they just don't write. I won't repeat the justification for this cruel maxim, but I accepted it.

This means it is much easier to own the guilt about not writing. Usually when things in life seem preoccupied with sucking, I write. But there. I shape sonnets, make lists, hang couplets. My concentration is sucked. It got sucked after the professional poise and all those notes and points I'd studied got sucked, it almost seemed, by that spooky conference calling phone device. What the world around me wants, it pulls it out of me like the vacuum cleaner I've been wishing for, because now there are more carpets.

When I pace around with spiral notebooks shedding, when I look around now and see that I must have been using the hole punch in my sleep because there's confetti on the rug, I wish my dustbuster wasn't futile. Oh, futile, yes, like trying to use the eraser tip of a pencil that isn't fossilized yet, but will be in a year --or a day after you bite the end of it. Futile like the paper itself is grammar school soft like a newspaper, but with faint blue lines traced across at the wrong angle for my fingers to comfortably caress the book and the fat slippery red pencil. Those school pencils had no eraser on the end, and the enamel paint flaked horribly and the wood sustained teethmarks wonderfully when chewed. Who can pass handwriting class without a good pen and notebook? when the lines snag and tear with the newly sharp soft graphite, or they appear already faded, like a penciled note-- forgotten or washed once or twice? (I got a "U," which means unsatisfactory.)

I apologize to myself. I will congratulate myself for all writing and all thinking that helps me make progress to my full time writing space. Going from way too much to do I have enough to do it. Oh, never before has a sentence I've written needed more punctuation for clarity. Metaphysically, materially, and here. New lap top. Snow tires. Roll up the rugs for now. There is always enough stuff to put on the floor.

"There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come--the readiness is all."

1260 Words-Daily Habit

Since I spent the last several weeks developing a binge writing habit, rather than training myself out of it, I'm glad I took a good week long "no writing" break to recover from my cold, my exams, and my old binge writing self.

Off to a good start this monday morning, thanks in part to fall backwards. My sweet husband-- who is keeping a writing schedule with me--woke up first. He went straight to the futon with his laptop before discovering that it wasn't really early, it was stupidly early. He came back to bed for a couple of hours.

Hmm, it isn't even 8:30 yet, and now I'm taking a break to let myself know that I obviously have more to say than I think. The three sentence note I meant to make about a page (yep, just one page) of Clarissa turned into three paragraphs and lots of words. And I ended up sticking her in a bathroom stall on a college campus reading all the sharpie responses to her rape confession. (I wonder if this is the sort of thing my committee members have been gently cautioning me against--the bathroom stall thing. I don't know. I'm the one who was working crisis intervention for the D.V. and date rape problems on my big-ten campus. Am I being flip, or am I the real girl, here?)

I won't worry, yet. I have a good team of editors to coax me out of the bathroom stalls if they find me skipping class in there.