timing

so i banged out my paper in literally about an hour. i don't know how it happens so fast, i think for me, picking the right moment to write, as opposed to forcing myself to write is key. but one must learn to trust yourself this way. drawing ever closer to deadlines, taking chances with things perhaps not getting done. i mean, that is always a possibility, that i won't meet my deadline. but i always do, always, even a day early. which is meeting a deadline for me, i always try to finish before i said i would.

and while i have much, much more to do for this last packet than i had hoped, i am confident it will be fine as well. i've picked up another book, so that makes it five more books to go. which is a whirlwind, but since my semester ends june 10 or so, i'm just glad to get it done. i need a rest. and a long deprivation.

but the freelance (emphasis on free), work hasn't stopped. i've got stuff i have to get to in my between time.

i hear if you do what you love, the money will follow. and i do. much of what i do is free, and i consider this, paying my dues. but there will come a time, there must come a time when i hang up my shingle and am ready for this foray into editing i want to take.

i still won't be a grammarian editor, i think those are plentiful enough. but i am more intuitive. less invasive, perhaps than some, though i will require a lot of any writer i work with. it's just my demanding character i guess. who knows.

my fingers are all stiff as boards and i'm not sure why. so my remedy is to make them work. to go off to the gym and work them out, to go down to the laundry and use them, as i don't have time to baby my hands. too much to do.

i've never felt this strange stiffness before though. so who knows.

i would like to use william stafford's a poem a day process, but it doesn't work for me and that is like forcing myself (which might be the point), and i don't force myself to create. i believe if we honor what does come when it comes, there won't be a need to force it out. it will come, and does. in it's own faithful way. we merely have to trust the timing, again, timing comes up. that when we have a poem to write, it will flow. but the wanting to write the poem does not precede the poem's time to be written. does this make sense?

just as, i read all the books but did not write a single word. i left them all piled round me for when i was ready to write.

when it was time to write, the words came like someone turning on the hose, they just rushed out and onto the page in their appointed places. quite nicely too, but this is because i subconsciously consider everything and let it steep awhile. i don't read and then produce a paper liketysplit. i read and let the works gestate in my mind. in the fullness of time, the words, as athena pop from my mind, fully formed. and it is a wonder to behold.

i like that image. and i'm ready for today's load of work and wonder. i must to the gym, much to do and time, it seems has an agenda all its own.

peace.