Fifty. Ninety.

I have been gathering song fragments.

These are the dregs, the pieces, the never-and-still-not-good-enough stuff. This is what I will work on for 50/90, lowering the quality bar, and then perhaps removing it altogether.

The good (?) news is that there's plenty of this material, more than enough to sustain 50+ songs.

Since the songs will be crap, I will set other challenges for myself to make this edifying. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

To finally play the bass sitting forlornly in the corner

To pull out the harmonicas and the ebow that I've never used

To record a track live

This is all prelude to approaching the stuff I really want and need to work on, what may turn out to be the next album. There's so much going on.

Most of it is good.

j.

Nostalgia.

Today:
I got caught up in some *serious* FAWM nostalgia.

It was quiet day at work, and I'm glad I could put on the headphones and listen, listen, listen. Some of the songs I wrote don't even feel like they were of or from me; some of the stuff is much cooler and much smoother than I remember.

And then I got caught up in other people's songs, and wow, there are some amazing singer-songwriters at that board. Wow.

I just want to tell everyone how good they are, all the time.

It's going to be a busy week. I'm doing some shows out of state next week. Should be fun, but there's a lot to do before I'm ready to go.

My current motto is: Pay your speeding tickets, and don't speed in the first place. I am out hundreds and hundreds of dollars because of a ticket I got the last time I traveled. Yeesh.

It's mostly good,
j.

A beginning.

Okay.

16,062 words for the new story.

It's not a draft yet. The words are sort-of loosely hint around the story idea; I mostly wrote without thinking, without any kind of respect for the linear or the sensical.

I feel slightly giddy, having pushed my way through it. It's the longest thing I've ever written, outside of November.

I just thought about it, just now, that I've written three novels, the past three Novembers. I've never allowed myself to put it to myself in those terms; I just think about them as "the things that take up my time each November," and I've never thought of them as living breathing works that might one day have a life outside of my apartment.

One day, when I'm brave, I'll go back and read them.

But for now, I'm going to print out 36 pages and come up with a plan for knocking this into a series of events that might make me feel something, anything...

j.

And once we start, the meter clicks...

Hi.

Words are magic, you know.

Writing is magic. It really feels like magic.

This may or may not be true for you. But it's true for me, it's the truest thing I can think to say at this moment.

I have been struggling, struggling with a short story forming in my head. I've logged about 6000 words on the story, writing like it was November. I fashioned and re-fashioned the first few paragraphs, to show to a friend from writing class, still not 100% sure it's right.

This *kills* me, this uncertainty.

In November, I'm writing too fast to acknowledge it. But here in real life, the days are stained with it.

I hate writing when I don't know where the story will end up. I feel like I'm walking with a candle in the dark, blindfolded. Either I'm going to fall off a cliff, or burn down the forest. In either instance, nothing good can come of it.

I took a break from writing tonight to read. I've been reading short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Very prosaic style, Jhumpa. I would have said that I prefer a much more lyrical style, a Toni Morrison. But Jhumpa gets the job done, lays her words out there, one after the other, and by the end of the story, I feel like the wheel has turned.

I then pulled out The Writer's Notebook, a book of essays on writing put together by Tin House. Read an interesting essay by Aimee Bender. It's hard to say exactly what it's about, but, by way of a Flannery O'Connor essay, she basically says that the sum of a story should be more than its parts, and it's okay if you're not sure what the sum (or the parts) are. It's okay not to know everything about your characters, it's okay to leave things hanging in the air.

I read the essay through and nodded to myself.

It's okay not to know. Yeah.

And then it came to me, where the new short story will go.

I don't know if the lock unclicking was related to the reading of the essay, but it feels like the two are related. In a way I don't understand. In a way I'm not meant to understand.

Magic.

j.

I do about two things a day.

Spring finds me slow. It's hard to act without a deadline, I actually bought a plane ticket going to the wrong airport yesterday.

I do what I can, I have been spending inordinate amounts of time staring into a screen.

Going to read Toni Morrison's Love now.

j

Not

Things are not right.

Not.
Right.

Not.

I'm trying to focus, trying to obsess. My mind is in about twelve different pieces at all times.

Low blood sugar doesn't help.

I am looking for my Passing Strange to save me tonight.

j.

Shaking off that Lower Nature.

Had a lovely dinner with an old old friend last night; I haven't seen him for almost nine years. He said some wonderful things that he didn't have to say, about music, about me. I found out that a mutual friend, our age, died suddenly of cancer several years back. Within the span of a couple of months. He went to the doctor concerned about weight gain, and within a few months had died.

Life is so, so short.

So, I didn't win that thing I was trying to win. The current dilemna is whether I should buy it now, anyway. It would help me some, I'm sure. My older, less evolved self would slink off into the shadows, pissed that Ms. Thing did not recognize my particular brand of genius and acknowledge it accordingly. Me Now wants to get over it and get on with it. Maybe.

*So* hard to shake off that Lower Nature.

Working from home today, and liking it muchly. I have my songwriting notebook at my side, listening to the magical Guy. Music is making me float. It's so hard to work.

I'm a good little girl, waiting for words. I've been waiting for words for weeks now, weeks. And sometimes I only have to wait hours.

Words fill me these days, just like food.

j.

Conversation.

Date: Today.
Time: A little earlier than Now.

Universe?
Yes?

I realized something today.
And what is that?

I don't think I trust you enough.
Really? Whatever do you mean?

(are you being sarcastic?)
(yes, I am. go on.)

I think I automatically assume that you're just not going to be there for me. I just assume that you're never going to provide what I need.
And why is that?

That's a really long story.
One day we'll have to talk about it.

I know, but not today.
That's okay.

Anyhow, there was this thing I was wanting.
Mmmm hmm.

I just assumed I would never have it.
Why did you assume that?

Because I hold it in my head two-thirds of the time that the Universe is a mean ol' place.
And is it? Am I a mean ol' place?

It's hard not to think so sometimes.
And so?

And so I've been in a bad mood for weeks, thinking how I would never have this thing I really wanted.
And then what happened?

Today - there it was. Suddenly it just showed up. I'm not even talking metaphor. The thing literally just showed up.
It did, didn't it?

I didn't have to go to it. It was just there for me.
It was, wasn't it?

I spent a lot of energy ranting and railing against you, you know.
Yes, I know.

It occurs to me that I could have wasted less time being a sour puss and actually have caused that thing I wanted to happen. Maybe the thing would have happened sooner.
Oh, you're finally realizing that now, are you? Good.

Yeesh, I am such a brat.
Yes, you can be.

Sorry.
It's okay.

I'll probably be a brat again tomorrow.
*sigh* I know. And I'll be proving you wrong again tomorrow.

Can I just take a minute and be thankful?
Of course.

****

j.

I will read. For hours!

Care.
Feeding.
So much to do.
A whole day ahead
and a universe
to achieve in that time.

Brain
reels.
What to do first?
I had a list.

Now it's hours later
and I've only
watched a movie
(somewhat groovy
and Norweigian)
about writers.
I should be writing?

I should be reading!
Today is a day
lost on exercise
and grand plans.

I will read words
and feed my head.

mwah,
j.

Today I tried to win something.

Man, I could use a nap.

It's 5pm. I am yawning like crazy. I am sitting here at work, trying to muster an ounce of focus.

I found out today that my package is pretty good. Better than what I was expecting, at least. If I'm diligent and frugal, like I know I should be, I'll have enough time to do what I need to do.

I am so looking forward to that first Saturday. I swear to God, I'm going to get up at eleven and walk to the library. I can taste that walk on my tongue now, as if it were a watermelon Now&Later.

Today I tried to win something.

I almost won the last thing I tried to win. One of my favorite British singer-songwriters held a contest and the prize was a book he contributed to. He told me that he liked my response, but it would have been expensive to send the book from Britain. *sigh* At least he remembered I'm in the US.

So, today I tried again to win something.

Woke up early. Typed through a standard essay with a nagging sense of "god, this is so typical." It was time to head out, and I thought, "No. We're going to skew this. Way out." I imagined a new starting sentence that really excited me.

And I came to work and wrote the essay. Through crazy deadlines and crappy meetings going on around me.

My essay solicited a response from the prize giver already. Hopefully this means I'm a shoe-in.

Cross your fingers for me.

Heading out to see some good friends tonight, which will be fun.

j.