It is Friday: Go Right Ahead
Not usually this early in the morning, but as a mild laxative.
Go easy on the beer. And lay off the hard liquor until I get back.
Honey, drinking is war.
Surprised?
Drinking is a way of ending the day.
Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks.
Are you stiff?
Don’t try to make a mystery of it.
Do I know you?
Was the young mechanic drunk?
You’re very glum. My sore throat is over. Let’s swim now.
Classic Word Spaces (6): Ernest Hemingway
Writing Room
Yesterday I spent a few hours in the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum and got to see the room where he wrote more than half of his work, though he only lived there for about ten years on and off . His routine was to wake up at six am and work until he had 700 words or it was time for lunch. Then he went out to fish until happy hour and then he drank until he was tired. That was how he wrote most of his books. His writing room was only accessible via a catwalk from the main house, and no one ever went in there except for him. (It is now my life’s goal to have a private writing room only accessible by catwalk or maybe a ladder and fireman’s pole or maybe a zipline.)
Creative Writing 101
This semester I’m teaching an undergraduate survey of creative writing at Rutgers. We’re two class meetings in, the students are all excited and smart and engaged. They’re making it a real pleasure to show up to class, which anyone who has ever taught before can tell you is not always the case. Because it’s a survey class, the idea is that we’ll look at the major forms of creative writing–fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Instead of doing “units” on each of these sections, my hope is to pair pieces from different forms, both oriented by a theme or element of craft, themselves relatable back to a writing exercise, and see what kind of glad serendipities result from the juxtapositions.