Taking up with the worldwide sweep of pages as we all take to Twitter about what book we’re reading today, I decided to give you some articles I’ve come across in the last week that I have found, if not interesting, then at least perplexing, like this first article. After reading it, I was like, “Wait, am I writing a novel? What am I doing?!” I had to read it several times just to see if I could figure out what it was saying. But all I came up with was that if you want to write a novel and are afraid of failing as a writer, you may as write the novel anyway, because every novel fails. I have no idea how that makes sense to me, but in some odd way it does.
Then there is David Sedaris’s disturbingly, yet comically, grisly tale about buying his partner an owl for…wait for it…Valentine’s Day. Apparently, once, his partner bought him a model of a human throat, so, an owl seems fair.
But then I came across this read about God and how we shouldn’t wait for Him to tell us our purpose in life. That “God joins us only when we take that initial risk.” It got me wondering if I was wrong to turn down grad school over the summer just because I didn’t have the funding from an assistantship or fellowship. But then I remember how one of my favorite professors told me that one should never have to pay for grad school. At least not one studying literature and writing. I assume medical students just have to suck it up. So, then, I thought that perhaps my waiting to receive funding for next Fall was a good idea, that I wouldn’t have learned some things about myself and my wants until I grew some space between myself and academia. I will say that in the few months since deferring to next Fall semester, I’ve learned a lot about what I want out of my interests, and in knowing what these are, I can prepare myself, allow myself to be molded into the person I need to be to accomplish these goals I daydream about.
Just last night I was saying to myself, “I want to be one of those writers who can afford to sit at home all day and write without having to worry about a full-time job.”
But after reading this article, I knew that I didn’t need to be able to write all the day long to get writing done. For instance, I woke up this morning at 7:30 to get some writing in. I’m writing this blog, will write some Morning Pages, and plan on working on my outline if I can squeeze it in before time to leave for work. (Because I’d also really like to scramble some eggs and fry some sausage for breakfast as well. I mean, my stomach has to come into play sometime.) All that I really need is discipline, focus, and a few hours to get my assignments done each day.
What is important, is that I have learned that in order to write, one must write. Simply. Granted, what got me up at 7:30 this morning to write was more an issue of me not be able to hold my bladder any longer before giving myself a UTI, but – hey – whatever works, right? If the secret to getting yourself up in the morning is to use the bathroom so that you can actually get your writing in well, then, I suggest drinking lots of water before bed.
