Randomness

Somewhere in my building, a fire alarm low-battery beep has been going off for the past 14 hours. I think, perhaps, someone should replace those batteries. I think, if they don't, I will lose what little is left of my sanity.

Mary and I interviewed Steve for BOR. We didn't know about his good news until after.

Someone else has good news, too. But since when were my friends grown up enough to get married? It still seems weird to me, even though I'm almost 28.

I was reading the stuff about Jason Bredle and solicitations this morning and was struck most by this comment JB made: "The thing is, I'm not really trying to publish right now, I'm trying to write." I never really thought about those being two separate processes, things that couldn't happen at the same time, but it is interesting to me to think about it now...to compartmentalize the tasks of writing and publishing might be kind of liberating. Granted, I haven't been doing much of either, but maybe if I picked one or the other, I'd start getting something done. I dunno. I've written two random, trying-to-be-lyric first drafts since school started, and revised one Stella poem that had never been workshopped, but I'm very unsure of where to go next with my work. I sent my chapbook out once at the beginning of the summer and once at the end. That's the extent of my po-biz activity for the past 4 months or so.

My manuscript is kind of like that house that someone decided to remodel but never finished. The wall between the kitchen and the dining room has been torn down, but the studs are still exposed. The new windows are in, but they haven't been framed. Some days, I think I should just put it back the way it was. Some days I want to get out the sledge hammer. Either way, I really should get back to work on it.

And then there's the new stuff. I mean, there should be some new stuff. I don't know what to write about. Before I had my thesis project nailed down, it was really hard to write because I didn't have a "subject". And now that the ms is (almost) finished, I don't know what to write about again. Stella keeps popping up, but if I keep writing new Stella poems, the ms isn't really finished. And if I put Stella to bed, what then? Part of me wants a new project to obsess about, part of me wants to just let the poems come, randomly, and then in a few months I'll sort through and see what's running through them. What makes more sense? I just don't know.

Being a PhD student isn't really helping me be a poet right now, though. I mean, like I said the other day, my workshop seems great, but...it is taking so much less time and energy than my other two classes that it feels a little like an after thought. My comp class is really taking a lot out of me. We have to write two complete syllabi (with daily plans), do three group presentations, and read approx 100-150 pgs of comp theory/comp textbooks every week, plus our final project/paper/presentation, which I haven't even started thinking about. Oh, and we have to do two "internships"-one where we shadow a current comp instructor for five weeks and one where we tutor in the writing lab (okay, when I say "we" here, I mean the rest of the class, because I'm exempt from the tutoring bc I had an assistantship at the writing lab back in the day). Anyhow, the point is this class is taking up a lot of time. More time than teaching would be taking up, probably. And then there's 503: Politics and Aesthetics. Ugh. I'm just praying we read something that makes sense soon.

Wow. I've been blogging for way longer than I planned. I have to get ready to go. ooops.