Boredom

I'm at Dey House today, getting some work done. My work today is the same as ever: trying to get fiction and poetry to hand jive. It can be done, but - as with many concerns in writing - the solution has to be a personal one, a personal way of rectifying the differences that separate these two modes. And not just personal to the writer, but personal to each particular piece. There's nothing special about this problem, really. It's the old idea that each story or poem is its own universe, with its own rules. My charge is to pay strict attention to language and diction while also working out problems of narrative (concision and clarity, chiefly) in a way where the only things that are sacrificed are the distracting and the unessential. Beyond that, my charge is to stay committed and interested - to not lose the necessary energy/vision along the way. And in Iowa's February, this can all be quite difficult. Going to Dey House helps...it's like calling on the ancestral writerly spirits of all the amazing people who've studied and taught here. "Keep at it," they say, "don't be a bore."