Saturday, September 12, 2009

When all else fails...

April?! My last post was in April? Sweet Lord, I had no idea it had been that long.

My apologies, my sweet little crumb muffins. I lost track of time. I was busy soaking in as much sun as I could to delay the winter doldrums that are always just around the corner. I was driving through the night over the east-midwest and spending saturdays lolling around deciding whether or not I would get dressed. I was being in love, and going to work, and writing in Tudor City Park as many lunch hours as possible, and cursing the ever-present rain in June, and fighting mice to the death in the wee hours of the night. Really, there's no excuse. I was somewhere else. But I'm here now.

And I haven't got much to say, really.

I've made the decision, once again, to apply for MFA programs for creative writing this fall. This, of course, has had a seriously devastating effect on my writing, which has screeched to a nasty and frustrating halt. I sent the boy off this afternoon (which was particularly suited to writing--cool, rainy, not much going on) so I could write, and then spent the next 4 hours reading essays on writing, writing about how frustrated i was about writing, writing a paragraph or two on the story i'm working on, hating it, writing some more about my writing frustrations, getting a snack, doing some pushups, checking the scores of all the college football games...all to end up with 10 frustratingly scratched pages in my journal and loads of frustration.

And now, here I am. When all else fails, there is still blogging.

I'm trying to trick myself into finishing the story I'm working on, the story I'd like to submit to MFA programs, the story that now HAS TO BE PERFECT, by telling myself that I'm just writing, no big deal, it doesn't matter, I'm just getting ideas on paper. But inside, I'm wrung tight like a wet dishtowel, I can't let go and just let it flow through me, it's like when you're deep breathing through an injury--it doesn't take the pain away, it just distracts you a little.

Basically, I'm fucked.