I need to get out more. ( Should I lineate that like a hay(na)ku? Nah. I don’t think so.)* What I need to do is to strike some sort of balance between really working at the writing and having some fun. Right at the moment I’m not getting any writing done (but not for lack of trying) and I’m not having fun (largely because I’m depressed about the writing not working). How fucked is that?

Writing is, as an activity, sort of inherently manic-depressive. Don’t you think? Major mood swings when things are going well and when they aren’t. At least that is my experience.

Sometimes the pieces one works hardest on are the most screwed-up, the most impossible to realize. Sometimes, too, it just takes awhile to see what one’s doing, what’s really there—or not.

My problem with Appearances so far is that I’ve been writing to make something happen (I don’t know what) that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t know if it will or can. I’m not writing from an outline or a plan. I’m writing by throwing a few different constellations of elements into play and hoping for the best.

Appearances is a plotless novel in fragments. Maybe I’m out of my mind. Of course, I spent over a year working on EXPOSURES , a sex book of many layers, and then withdrew it from the press which had committed to getting it out. A failure of nerve on my part. What is wrong with me?

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*It strikes me how often I write a phrase or sentence not knowing if it will be a poem or blog note or note to self or the next deleted whatever. I’m always asking “What is this thing I’ve just done? Is it something other than what I think it is?”