As I prepare for my three week novel class I find myself thinking about how I trained myself to be a ‘constant writer’. The training took. I write ten minutes every day, but I don’t seem to write any more that that as of late. This is not for lack of ideas. I have the beginnings of a million stories in my head and none of the guts to write them. Or patience. Or paycheck. Or desire. Really, it could be any one of those things. Recognizing the relationship between will, desire, and execution is a large part of what I want to teach the class. I want them to be proud of the journey and to remain engaged in it throughout. A finished book is good, but I’ve had just as much fun writing two or three solid chapters.
The difficulty inherent in this class is figuring out how much to share and work on in the 6 hours total I have with this large (20) group of students. I’ll get them there. I have to. It’s what I do.
Some Thoughts:
- My post about existing is helping me come to terms with death. It is also creating perspective for Deja Vu/deja vecu. I experienced a particularly strong moment of that today and thought that this moment did happen in one or more of my parallel existences and serves, in a sense, as a bridge cutting through the inherent time loop. It is a decision point that remains unchanged across realities. In reality it was a dog running across a field, but it felt quite a bit weightier to me.
- Speaking of weight… I’m falling asleep at three in the afternoon trying to write this. It isn’t that I’m bored, its that I have fallen back into unhealthy eating habits–namely taking in one huge meal and not really eating another meal throughout the day. This is one of many symptoms and causes of my girth.
- Kendrick Lamar on why he has so little to say about Trump: I mean, it’s like beating a dead horse. We already know what it is. Are we gonna keep talking about it or are we gonna take action? You just get to a point where you’re tired of talking about it. It weighs you down and it drains your energy when you’re speaking about something or someone that’s completely ridiculous. So, on and off the album, I took it upon myself to take action in my own community. On the record, I made an action to not speak about what’s going on in the world or the places they put us in. Speak on self; reflection of self first. That’s where the initial change will start from.
- To quote another great rapper, “That something that a preacher can’t preach.”