Chicken Nuggets Equal Novels? What the Hell is He on About?

There is satisfaction, such as a well enjoyed meal of chicken nuggets on a Tuesday noon. And then there is satisfaction, like hitting 8000 words on your novel.

There is joy, like that experienced reading an excerpt of your novel and saying to yourself, "That is not bad." And then there is joy, like that experienced when you tell a class of fifty juniors that your novel is crap and that it just doesn't matter. The joy of writing--that's why you do it. The ability to say (you hope) I won! I wrote 50,000 words in a month! That is joy. That is satisfaction.

I'm still hacking--hacking up phlegm AND hacking away at the mountain of words I must employ this month. Check out the button over there if you are interested, and participate (in the writing, not the hacking up of phlegm)! It's never too late. What the hell!

I also confessed today, as I do every year to my classes, of my love for Anne Sexton. She was the first poet I really loved that I found all by myself. I guess I had liked other poets and poems that I read in school, but she was the first one I remember finding and liking all on my own. And you never forget your first.

What else? Oh, Monkey is doing a great job of being my muse while I write, AND, she wanted me to make certain that everyone knew that she had been going into work late in order to get extra rest while she was sick. She did a good job of self-care (better than I did), and she is now almost as good as new. I, on the other hand, am slowly recovering (today is over a week!).

Alright, sports fans, I gotta go write some words. Later. But I leave you with one of Anne Sexton's poems.

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves;
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
Whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.