It’s a conspiracy.

My friend Erz said, “poke me and make me write! let’s send each other everything we work on!”

My friend Sweet Pea said, “let’s work on an epistolary project! also send me everything you write!”

My friend Bom said, “I miss writing. Send me some of yours.”

My friend Meg.2 (as opposed to Meg.1, who is not a writer) has us both on a strict new Writing Regimen that involves nagging via gchat. She also spent half an hour on Sunday brainstorming on a story in ways that made the hair stand up on my arms.

Ang. read a flash fiction and had a whole convo with me about *choosing vocabularies*, which caused lights like fireflies in my head.

And Jen emailed with links and a meandering convo about folktales, plus two ideas of her own and a request to read more of mine.

Guess I’d better get writing, if all these people want to read.

I’ve been thinking about breath lately, and the ways in which one’s own breath reflects the mind: the long, slow breaths of peacefulness; the shallow pant of illness or pain; the fizzy hyperventilation of joy, of falling in love.

Words are just the same. The other night I took a poem about running and gave it meter, a thudding rhythm of iambs that launch themselves up at the end off an anapest.

Satisfying work, that.

The poem is a shy cat

hiding under the sofa

inside the box spring

behind my shoes,

refusing

to come out.

I was poking through some old files on my computer the other night and came across a long poem I wrote right after my divorce. It’s based on the first ten kata of eishin ryu iaido, a martial art that I used to study (and miss deeply).

The poem, using each of the kata as a framework, describes ten moments in time.

It’s not a bad poem – it would need work – and at one time it was very important to me.

At one point I had an 88-page manuscript of poetry that I was revising in hope of publication, and “1000 Cuts” was to be the opening piece.

I don’t care about those poems anymore.

That woman, the one who suffered and bled onto the page, is so far in my rear-view mirror. At the time I thought nothing worse could ever happen to me than those six months that capped years of struggle and denial and tears.

I wrote the poems. Some of them are decent poems, but they’re not enough: they’re private things, personal things, and the best poetry (the best art) releases the personal into the universal, which these do not.

I needed to write them. It helped heal my heart to write them. It helped me (eventually) become a better writer to write them.

But they bore me now.

I wonder whether I will look back in ten years on the things I’m writing now and be bored by them too.

If you’re curious about iaido, here’s a clip (that is not me). And, in the comments, you can see a demonstration of why I was sometimes annoyed by my martial arts classes.

The other day I was poking around on the intenet, as one does when one does not wish to edit anymore, no no no no no, and I came across a journal I hadn’t heard of before.

They have themes and such. “Hm,” says I, “that is an interesting theme. Too bad the deadline is so soon. There’s no way I could write something that quickly.”

Then, in the car on the way home, some unknown person made an unknown comment about an unknown subject, and my brain clicked. I reached for my notebook, and by 9:00 pm the piece was done.

If ONLY it were always so easy.

(Then I suppose I’d have permanent hand strain.)

When my little cat friend went a-wandering into the bardo, I stopped sleeping. Insomnia is like the IRS: I know it’s always going to come around, no matter how badly I want it to stay away.

And I have discovered in recent years that I am really not the Suffering Artist type. If I’m going to write anything good, I require sleep, food, and a sense of safety. And, for the love of Silenus, sobriety. I may think I’m a genius during that third glass of wine, but the next day I’ll realize all the output is crap. (Or, more likely, CRRRRRRRAP!!)

It’s been a bad month for writing. It has been a great month for knitting. I actually made a tiny dent in the pile of yarn.

The new kitten arrives tomorrow. One hopes I shall stop wallowing and get back into my routine.

And, you know, maybe even sleep, before I totally crack up.

Oh, I am a slow writer. I am the very slowest of slow writers. You know, except when a story comes out fast.

But in general, I tend to be working on things that have been hanging around for months to a year.

Recently a friend of mine gave a story a whizz-bang edit: just chock full of helpful commentary and enthusiasm. I hadn’t looked at the story since I sent it to her.

And you know what? It’s a watershed story: one of the ones that represents a step up the ladder. I’m proud of that work. I’m confident it’ll find a home. It’s actually pretty (shh!) good.

It makes all the other things I’m working on look  flaccid in comparison. Now I want to start them all over from scratch.

Dangit!