the poet in you

"The dog came along first, then the voice. Only after a few pages did I really start to ask, Who does the voice belong to? So Christopher came along, in fact, after the book had already got underway."

Mark Haddon on The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time


"Ninety-five percent of everything I've written has been done in bed."

-Paul Bowles

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, it begins November 1st to be exact. November 1st at the stroke of midnight to be precise. I've done NaNo for years now, five at least. I've never successfully reached the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month but I've attempted the insanity. This year I'm feeling anxious about it, already dreading the failure. I have not the vaguest notion what I would write about. I've entertained the thought of not participating this year. But not participate? Mon Dieu! That seems a bit extreme.

I have around me several books on writing, on craft, a wonderful book,  Subtext by Charles Baxter, a book entitles Page by Page by Heather Sellers. These are all inspirational and wonderful in their own way  but still...I'm completely empty inside. On my search for a subject I've found a few little inspirational gems that I'll share with you.

"Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall."
    -Susan Sontag

"What I need to do when I'm writing something is figure out what it is I'm thinking about and where my energy is. And (this time) my energy was in the thought that I couldn't do it. So I decided, OK, that's what I'm going to write about. Then it started to fall into place."
    -Charlie Kaufman on Adaptation

The slow economy has finally caught up with us. I really didn't think that it would have that much impact on us but now that my hours have been cut I'm beginning to think that no one is immune to the slump. My work week at the clinic is now 10 hours shorter and I'm not completely torn up by it. It feels a little exciting, a little like a dare. If I can survive on an average of 25 hours a week do I really need to be there at all? In the darkest corners of my mind is the ever looming issue of health insurance, both mine and the dogs. So yes, for the time being that is a huge incentive.

But I hardly feel like I am missing 10 hours, it feels like I have 10 MORE hours at home. I've been scouting a lot more, I was able to see Art Spiegelman when he was in Austin for a book signing, and I'm still trying to decide whether or not to go see Sarah Vowel at her reading/signing this evening. And in just one week, NaNoWriMo will start. I do make good use of the "extra" time that I have and it will be a very difficult thing to go back to a 35+ hour work week when and if the time comes.