2010-09-01 - 4:12 p.m.
It feels as if I've written this entry before, but tonight I teach the first class of English 291: Creative Essays, or something close to that. I've printed out the syllabus, printed out 30 copies of two hard little gems of essays that I hope spark some kind of fire. I wish I could say I'm excited, and I know I should be, but I'm not. I don't have much enthusiasm for grading essays. That particular fire's been put out. I like talking writing and I like enthusiasm, but I feel as if I've been over this before. It's selfish to say this, but: where does all that energy go, all that fire from the fall semester of 2007, the spring of 2008, and on and on? Shouldn't these ideas about a piece of writing's stout stake and urgency and ease of prose just circle overhead, to be plucked at any time, like floating dandelion seeds? Or like turkey vultrues?
Oh, I complain. But I don't mean it. I'm just tired of grading papers. And it's true that maybe this will be the last semester of this, for a while. I may take some time off. Because there's this: I'm closing in on a book. I'm doing an edit right now and it's coming along. I'm on page 115 out of 359. I've shaved off 15 pages so far, with line edits. And this is boring talk, but the point is: I'm making it tighter. It needs to bounce like a cranberry and so that's what I'm trying to get it to do.
In other news, since for the past few weeks I've switched my iPod to shuffle mode, I just can't get behind Tori Amos. That Fiona Apple, however, I'd buy her a cup of coffee. And Liz Phair, she's almost anti-musical, but she grows on me.
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