Discoforming

April 3

It's late here, darlings, and I needs must shower and sleep soon. I was up until about 3:30 last night-- one part daylight-savings-timelag, one part whirring brain, one part being awake and intellectually hungry and reading and writing. This morning my stomach disapproved of me (or more likely disapproved of yesterday's chicken wings), so I called in to work and lazed around home until about 9:30, when I decided I was feeling all better and went to work. It's amazing what a difference an hour makes; I think if I regularly worked 7 hour days I'd feel 50% better and more relaxed.

Nah. I'd get used to the new schedule eventually, and bitch about it, too.

I finished By Bizarre Hands, and liked it, though the excerpt from The Magic Wagon has me hungry to read that most-elusive Lansdale novel. If any of you have a copy and want to loan it to a responsible bibliophile like me, just let me know.

I got a package from Meg today! She sent it on February 26th, via priority mail. It arrived today. Gotta love the USPS. The enclosed Starbursts are little blocks of colorful plastic at this point, alas-- the one I tried to eat cracked. The girl scout cookies are fine though (and yummy!), and the cool black gel-filled wristpad thingy is awesome. Thanks, Meg!

I read slush this evening, which made me feel virtuous-- I'm starting to get some great submissions. My submission call appears to be propagating throughout the web. I went to Pergolesi and snagged the only available table, which was unfortunately on the dark side, with the disco-ball. It was impossible to read in the dimness, so instead I wrote by disco-light. Just poetry, but I think it's a good piece, a bit about Norse gods and weather inspired partially by an e-mail conversation I had with Marissa. I hung out with Scott for a bit, watching old-school Simpsons episodes and cracking up over commercials. Our favorite, for some metabolism-boosting drug, began with an image of some ripped dude's abs and a voiceover saying "Not everyone is blessed with genetics."

We nearabout fell off the couch from laughing at that.

I did the stuff I intended to do today, but not much beyond. I just don't feel super-productive. I'm reading, thinking, writing some poems... there's stuff going on in my head, but it's of an undermind, boys-in-the-back-room variety. Which is fine, but on some level that's not as satisfying as saying "Hey, I wrote 30 pages of fiction tonight."

I'm slowly adjusting my criteria for satisfaction. I'm, like, terraforming my mind. Or anthropoforming. Though I guess I started out as human... ah, well. Maybe you know what I mean. I'm examining my writing habits and figuring out which bits are useful and which bits are crap. I've been telling myself for years that I should write every day, and I think that's a good idea... but for too long I've taken that to mean "produce new fiction" every day. That's just not the way! Some days I need to revise. Some days I need to outline. Some days, especially lately, I need to write (awesome) poetry. Some days I need to write long letters. I've only recently been able to overcome the guilty feelings that come when I don't write new fiction each day. And while Powers suggests that guilt about not writing is the best engine for writing, I don't really need that engine. I write; that's not a problem. Lord, I write. Sometimes I worry that I don't do much of anything else.

So now I'll stop writing, and sleep.

Messy love is better than none,
I guess. I'm no authority
on sane living.

-Margaret Atwood, from "Asparagus"