Busy-Busy-Busy.

In all the busy-busy-busy go-go-go of life lately, (there has been a lot of busy-busy-busy go-go-go BTW), I realize that I have completely lost track of a couple of things.

For instance, it is October and I had a birthday. It was terrible! Without belaboring the details, I am now old. As where before I was just kind of getting old, I am now old. Luckily I decided some time ago that standard metrics of life success were not for me, because otherwise I would be feeling pretty silly and sad about some of my life choices right about now.

Also, I have been teaching for real for a few months now, but I have been so busy teaching that I haven’t gotten to savor very much the fact that I am teaching. I really enjoy it. I have no earthly clue if I am any good at it, but since I am so good at all the other things, it is safe to assume I am good at this one … that’s how these things work, right? Go I hope that’s how these things work.

Additionally, it is October and that means next month is November and every year in November I attempt (and usually fail at) doing NaNoWriMo (which is National Novel Writer’s Month) and, oddly, while I am in a writing program and know plenty of writers, almost none of them share my enthusiasm for the project, the goal of which is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in one month. It is a nearly impossible goal and I have only ever succeeded a couple of time, but I always learn something from the attempt. I wonder why no one else does this though. Probably this is owing to the fact that many of the writers I know are younger than I am and/or learned how to write from going to school, so they don’t conceptualize writing as a grueling marathon that one competes in completely alone. Learning to write in college teaches you that you produce short, tight work and then you show it to other people. I didn’t learn to write that way, I learned to write more or less alone, not knowing (or really caring) if anyone else would ever lay eyes on a single word. It is an act of love for me, but also I guess, a kind of compulsion or, at the very least, something that I make myself do because I know that it is something I should do. When I go running a lot (which I have not been doing enough of, on account of the disgusting heat the past few month) I feel a feeling similar to what I feel when I make myself right; it is hard, but becomes less hard through repetition and ultimately there is a tremendous feeling of pride in having done it.

Anyway, NANO is coming up next month and I don’t have any idea what to write about. A couple months ago I did read a fascinating book called Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky and I still find myself thinking about it just about every day. It was a bizarre and beautiful little book about remote islands. Each island was described in a couple of pages, but it was haunting and strange and kind of inspired. I would love to write something broken up into misshapen pieces that way. Or maybe that is just the kind of mood I’m in.

Also in November I am going to Colorado for a few days. I’m doing it primarily because I found an insanely cheap flight to Denver. It is on Frontier Airlines, which is one of those airlines that’s so cheap the planes only have one wing and half the amount of fuel required to get to the destination. My roundtrip from LAX to DEN was $76.

Let me say that again: My. Roundtrip. LAX to DEN. Was seventy-six dollars.

The wanderlust adventurer in me could not allow that to go by.

It works out nicely though because I’m thinking of applying to the MFA program at Colorado State University, which is an hour from Denver in Ft. Collins, so I justified the trip to myself by selling it as a way to visit their campus, which is a responsible thing to do. Got that? I am being responsible!

There are a million other things going on, but those are the only ones I want to write about right now. Though I should mention briefly that I have found myself mentioning a lot lately that I write a blog. I’m not bragging on it (any asshole can write a blog) and I’m not trolling for readers (I have long since given up on the idea that anyone reads this thing), but it has come up in numerous conversations lately about my “craft” of writing (which means that frequently lately I have found myself ambushed into conversations about “craft”, ick, gag me with a spoon). It turns out that part of my “craft” is simply to write a lot. I don’t write every day and I don’t write as much as I would like, or should, but I look back over the past few years and I realize that I’m almost always writing, either for fun or for school, or for this blog. I realize how useful it has been to me to have this place where I can write something and then send it out there into the world. Even if that has not improved my “craft”, it has certainly helped me do away with things like “standards” or “a sense of decency” when presenting my writing to the world.

Occasionally people who care about me have suggested that I temporarily set this blog to private so that prospective employers or students or what have you won’t stumble across it, but I have always been reluctant to do that because I’m choosing what I put out there into the world. My sense of decorum may be a little different than some people’s, but it's not like this is a blog of dick pics or anything, it is a blog about the writing life and the way in which writing is a way of attempting to understand the world.

And cat pictures. This is also a blog of cat pictures.

And pictures of buildings.

And other cool things that I “find”.

And I find a lot of cool stuff.

That is all I have time to write about right now. I have a bunch of busy-busy-busy go-go-go to get back to after all.

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Teeth.

By now you have probably caught on to the fact that I am largely of the mindset that you (dear reader) do not exist and this blog is just a vanity project and maybe also a way to have an online presence as a writer. No, no, it’s okay, you don’t have to try to convince me otherwise, because I know you can’t, because you’re a Russian internet bot. It’s okay, I accept you as your are.

That being said, I do find it to be tremendously freeing to know that no one reads this thing and that the bots probably don’t speak English anyway.

I find it freeing because I can say whatever I want and also that if I want to just drop the word TEETH into the middle of a sentence for no TEETH reason, well then I can do that and it doesn’t even TEETH matter, because you’re not reading this anyway.

I mention all this only because last week I was sitting in a creative writing class and we were in small groups doing critiques of one another’s (very) short stories. Well a guy I know from another class who is actually a really great TEETH guy and about whom everyone can agree (on his great-guy-ness) read this thing I had written and all he really said to me was, “You must write a lot” and I thought it was an odd comment at the time and I have been thinking about it off and on over this last week and it occurred to me that, yeah, I guess I do write a lot. I’ve been at this since I was about 6 and while I do not TEETH write as much as I should be, between the academic work I have done for school over the years, the creative work I have done for school over the years, the creative work I do on my own for fun, and the writing I do here for you (dear reader), that I do a lot of writing.

I’m not boasting or anything. Malcolm Gladwell says to be good at anything you have to put in 10,000 hours and so I always just figured that I’m putting in my TEETH hours.

Well, enter this article that a friend sent to me:

Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One.

There is some great stuff in here which in my limited experience is applicable to any group of writers, not just the MFA kids.

This is probably the line that resonates with me the most because I am constantly thinking of saying it (politely-ish): “The vast majority of my students were hardworking, thoughtful people devoted to improving their craft despite having nothing interesting to express and no interesting way to express it.”

Many of my peers in the MA program I’m in right now seem to be between about 24 and 27, which more or less means that they have gone straight from high school to college undergrad to grad school. They’re generally okay people but I want to tell them that they need to get the fuck away from college for awhile and go do something. Really it doesn't even matter what, just anything. Just be elsewhere for a bit. I tried to convince the department chair that part of the creative writing curriculum should involve being forced to work on a fishing trawler in the north Pacific for a season, but she looked at me like I was crazy. That happens to me a lot around here. You try telling a 24-year-old working on her Masters degree that her writing would get so much better if she spent a year working a loading dock somewhere. People don’t like to hear those things and sometimes I occasionally forget to say them nicely.

I’m being a bit too navel-gazing-y here, but what do you TEETH care? You’re a Russian internet bot, what the hell else do you have to do right now?

Obviously my opinion that writers should have to spend a while suffering out there in the wild (that’s what I say to people here, that I learned to write in “the wild” — meaning not-school. Yeah, I’m that much of an insufferable prick.) is entirely based on my own experience with the world. I’m at least not pretending otherwise. All I can offer is the best advice I have, but in this case, I think the advice is solid.

I was recently having a conversation like this with some friends and I said that despite how uncomfortable I am with the fact I am frequently TEN YEARS older than some of the other students in my classes, I’m happy with the circuitous path I’ve taken through life, if only because I’ve had the opportunity to figure out what I value as a person and because as a writer I had the opportunity to learn how to write on my own. What I actually said was, “Can you imagine how much more of an asshole I would be if I had gone straight through college and into an MFA program?” See? I do have the occasional lucid TEETH moment.

I do take one small issue with a paragraph at the end of the MFA article. He says:

We've been trained to turn to our phones to inform our followers of our somewhat witty observations. I think the instant validation of our apps is an enemy to producing the kind of writing that takes years to complete.

All the current thinking about the online life bothers me because of this “instant validation” idea. I have a Facebook, a Twitter, an Instagram, and this here blog, and I have always found validations completely elusive. So let’s not conflate the digital existence with "instant validation". I took a really good picture of my food yesterday and I don’t think anyone even TEETH cared!  

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Breakdown? Or breakthrough?

I’ve spent the last few days trying to break through a particularly nasty (and long) stretch of writer’s block. Below you’ll find a bunch of very fresh and very raw and not very good writing. Those of you who have visited here before already know that the editors here at standardkink don’t have anything that could even laughably be described as “standards” and I have always enjoyed that about them.

If you like your blog-o-sphere undercooked and poorly edited, then this is basically going to be the best day of your life.

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