Ah blissful ignorance! A year ago, I had no problem launching into a new project, typing away for hours on end, tiny springs in my fingers, a story teller telling a story, welling with confidence. No misgivings. No reticence. I was good and I knew it. I had been accepted to a program, goll-dernit and my mother and friends had been telling me I was awesome for half a century. Now, I know better. I have been trained to recognize crap when I read it, and when I write it. I can still spend hours piling words onto a page, only to see them for what they are; a rambling, aimless heap of dung. There's no story in this effort and there may never be. It's words, sentences, paragraphs, lying around haphazard, like Jenga blocks after somebody gets cocky and pulls too hard, or too slow, and the tower crumbles. Some of the sentences are good, no doubt, but it will take Herculean effort and no small amount of luck to assemble and re-write it all into something readable.
So today, I walk away from the pile. I will leave it, jumbled on the page, to stew like rhetorical chowder. Fresh eyes will take a peek at it later in the week, but no sooner. Meanwhile, I shall plunk out an unrelated essay discussing someone else's story, a real writer, someone who knew what the hell he was doing, or at least who made it look that way. Ah, but before that, there are dishes to wash. No story there, either. Just a mound of bowls and plates and pans and cups.
A hui hou. Aloha!
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