Being that my friend David and this very cool girl I met at the beastly MLA convention, Melanie (with whom I sat at the bar and bummed cigarettes and waited out the awful, lustful glances of a contemporary poet who will go unnamed), do this, I decided to try it as well.
Both have said that they cannot get anything done unless they write first thing. Before bill-paying or television-watching or lunch-meeting or children-playing or test-grading or bank-going or dinner-making or life-living.
First thing before anything.
I used to be a night writer. I stayed up late--sometimes till 4 or 5, sometimes I didn't go to bed at all, or when I did it was with the freshly-printed page so I could read it last thing before falling. I drank lots of coffee, and wore black Mary Janes and overalls and fuzzy thrift store sweaters and didn't brush my hair and was very serious.
But now, this past week, I've gotten up early, and tried to pull myself together in halfway decent time, and get to the office by 8:30 or 9 (am people!), and pull up the file, and put on the classical, and get down to it. Just get it over with.
Thus. The birth of a new system.
I love organization. I love plans and planners, and schematic, and schedules. I just can't seem to follow any of them.
But the first day, when the leather is new, and the page has its first appointment, and the journal bears an entry, and the pen still makes a scratchy sound, it works. It always seems like this time, this time, it will be different.
I am also trying to drink coffee. Hesitantly. In half cup doses.
Last night: Thai. Long car ride in the country dark. Skies in which you could actually see stars, shapes, what they had in store for us.
