From my morning walk. If it seems like I am taking a lot of pictures of flowers lately, it is because I am taking a lot of pictures of flowers lately. It’s spring, duh
I know I’m not posting that much here, but you can still keep up with me on twitter if you like, where I make HUNDREDS NAY THOUSANDS of daily appearances.
Anyway.
I was suddenly sick yesterday, for about ten hours. Feverish, achey, exhausted. I slept for three hours in the middle of the afternoon. Kate kept saying, “Order some Tom Yum soup.” I ignored her because I am poor and trying not to order too much carry-out. But by the evening I was still sweating and pained and miserable so I ordered some soup, and lo and behold, I was healed.
The moral of the story is: just order the damn soup already.
In my vaguely hallucinatory half-wake, half-sleep, all-deep-sweat, I was having these thoughts about how my notebook is a staging ground for the final product, and how if I used it properly, if I really did all my thinking on the page and in my head, I would be able to type 1000 words a day in less than 20 minutes. (I have been obsessed for a while with that story about Edward P. Jones which revealed that he creates and then memorizes his entire book in his head for years without typing a word. I am jealous of this ability, but also I think I need the regular fulfillment of creating something I can share with other people.) I feel like I was trying to mechanize my writing, which obviously is not a good idea because it should be free-flowing and organic, like love, or at least my idea of love anyway.
But there was something valuable in thinking about using the notebook as a staging ground. I didn’t use the notebook that much for my last book; I was just pouring practically everything straight into the computer. But I feel pretty energized now that I’ve returned to spending my first thinking moments every day with my moleskin. Perhaps by the end of the book I’ll just be entering everything directly into to the Word document, but for now this strategy feels comfortable and productive.
If you have made it this far, I congratulate you. This hyper-analysis of my process, it’s a little much, don’t you think? And yet I cannot seem to stop myself.
Here’s a picture I took of a man in a thong at Brighton Beach to cleanse your palate.
Have a great, sunny, hot weekend, wherever you are.
