if i’ve lowered my eyes and closed my mouth and sat quietly and alone, and not opened myself up to true engagement, it is only because i need to be so careful when i do so, because when i do it i do it hard, i empty myself out and take you all in to see you clearly, but this is tricky business and i’ve learned cannot be done with anyone, because if you’re that sensitive the switch of it could kill you. 

my hope is that i can trust my intuition and use it wisely, that i can keep those out that must be kept out for preservation, but not reject those for whom a connection with would be important.

and when the matter is uncertain, i wonder which mistake would be worse.

wrote a letter to my grandma today.  probably more important than writing self-indulgent fiction.  sick of listening to my own sick brain.  time for a new character channel.

without waiting

so different from the picture which i should like to draw

was the appropriate choice of voice for my nadja story.

I can’t be half gentle enough,
half tender enough
toward you, toward you,
inarticulate, not half loving enough
BRIGHTen
the cor
ner
where you are

I forgot how much I love this book.  William Carlos Williams could use anything (a shitty New Jersey town) as a starting point or springboard for singing the most important lyrics.

perpetually,
in your composition and decomposition,
i find my
– despair!   
william carlos williams

What does all this lyrical effect do for fiction? Just like figures of speech, lyricism sinks your story deeper inside the subconscious of the reader. If music says things words can’t express, text that feels like music also carries those nonverbal meanings, immersing the reader in the experience in a rather primal way. Chris Lombardi

finished first draft of entry to next npr contest.  they didn’t want ‘we have built a house for you;’ i felt it was sufficiently creepy, but i guess i suck at structure so that was probably the problem.  i can’t seem to write with a predetermined structure, just the acknowledgment of structure as valuable seems to dissolve my ability to write freely, so this leaves me with writing the story first, letting it tell me what it wanted to say, and then adding the structure afterward.  maybe i just enjoy making more work for myself.