eNewsHound

This is the weekend when I decided I would lock myself in and write the poem of the century.  I had been stuck in a dayjob for years, and the past three months has been about overtime.  I haven’t seen the inside of my own apartment, or my own head, for a lot of hours in a row, and I knew there was something in there.  Usually, I try to work just enough to keep food and lodging, so I can spend some time every day working on my craft.  It happens sometimes, what they say, where you start to work, and the money is not bad, and you start to get used to that, and suddenly you’re no longer a writer.

I’ve seen it happen to close friends, and it always strikes me as a great loss.  It’s not just because there’s another dream deferred, and a kind of personal happiness that’s compromised, but also because that work that was supposed to come and live on the planet has been abandoned.  With that spirit then, I checked myself into a cool hotel, and prepared myself to write all weekend.

It starts off slow, this writer’s block, and it always starts the same way, and I always convince myself it’s not started.  The distractions in the world that make it hard for a dog to watch tv start to affect me, and I’m soon deciding to meet a friend in the Village, because it’s been so long.  I scribble a few words just so I don’t feel totally guilty while I’m out.  While I’m out, we’re having a great time, and those few words grow in significance in my mind, and I start to remember them as being the beginning of that poem.  It’s almost an entire verse, and that’s quite a bit, and I’m very optimistic.  By the next morning, however, the few words are really only two, and one of them is “the,” so I decide to sit down, and stay in the room even if there’s a fire.  I write about the Village, and suddenly I remember why I came here.