Four weeks into the semester and everything is happening (hence my posts on this blog getting fewer and farther between). Teaching two classes and feeling like a jedi, like this is the part of my Iowa experience where everything comes to fruition. Also, Jim's workshop is - while semilucid - a fun and strange environment that's causing me to write one of my most dystopic stories to date. Good times there. I've been experimenting with automatic writing while blasting Patti Smith on headphones. The result's uneven but really interesting - alluvial flush from the oblique twilight of consciousness. (From there I pare and mend, piece together a scaffolding that'll hold a whole dreamscape.) And next week I start reading flash fiction for NPR. They're doing a short fiction contest and have enlisted 20 of us from the fiction workshop to help judge it.
Overall judgment: This winter's a hell of a lot easier than last winter: I actually look forward to snow storms! And with so much on my plate, I'm not really even at risk of over-indulging that natural drawing-down of internal, psychic energy. Iowa can be beautiful in the winter, and I'm happy to be able to write that and to mean it. And, of course, there's this amazing new life on the way, which is a concept that boggles my mind and keeps Janelle and me up late talking wonderment while the winter moon scrolls overhead and shining.
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