89.

[a room of one's own]

And so I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer. I hazard the explanation that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. (72)

Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

once upon a time i was a writer for a week and nothing else. i'm in Provincetown (read: paradise in the summer, cool seabreezes on my porch, from my window it looks like i live in a jungle, but with the sea shining in the backdrop) for the week studying at the Fine Arts Work Center. i've been given this opportunity, for the first time in my life, to sit with my thoughts and try to "discover what belongs to what." it's a hard business writing about things you know. you know them, you believe in them, and almost feel like doing right by them is an indisputable fact. i've learned that even if you are a lover of language and know how to effectively wield the tools to have the power you hoped with it, sometimes the art is in cutting. to. essentials. faulkner called it killing your darlings. if there is a line you love too much you may need to analyze the love and ensure the meaning and the power of plot is not lost in the love. love can be a bad, bad medicine.

i'll post some stuff as i go on. i have no idea what i'm creating and am trying to answer all the whys and wherefores. there is something magical in turning loose of knowing though. something enchanting about creating just 'cause it's what i oughta do for me right now.

i'll do my first ever reading tomorrow. (i feel like i'm pretending and i love it).

for now, here is a sliver of a rough cut.

...She replaced that spit-soaked wad of Rooster stuffed in her bottom lip with a Marlboro Red when Roy told her dipping was not what respectable ladies did. Daddy told me about her rust-colored wisps that escaped from under her bonnet sashaying in the hot breeze; the river of brown that crept down her chin like a secret revealed then forgotten long enough to converge with that day’s sweat.. Products of toiling in the field, tugging cotton from the boll from sun up to dinnertime. And my daddy thought her beautiful. Called her an angel and sang her song like a gospel chorus on Sunday morning...