The other night my new thesis advisor was in town to read from her recently-published book at A Different Light, where we arranged for me to give her my book-thus-far. That evening also marked the end of the first week of the semester, and my first weekly ten pages were also due. This breaks down to two pages a day, five days a week, and I’m happy to report that I met this goal, and am three days into my second week, with equally satisfying results. Two pages a day may not sound like much, but I’m quietly ecstatic about fulfilling my rather narrow, self-defined purpose in life.

After months of not-writing at distracting coffee shops, and not-writing in my bedroom (despite my beautiful new desk from Room and Board that – since it couldn’t fit through the hallway –had to be carried down the side of a hill and pushed gingerly through my bedroom window), I discovered that if I took my laptop upstairs to the dining room table, turned off the internet connection, drank a Red Bull or three, and stared at a blank Word document for an hour, I could crank out two pages of really bad writing. The months of not-writing have left me thick-headed and rather stupid on the page, and every five minutes or so I stand up and pace the fifty feet from the table to the living room window and back, several times, till I grow a bit dizzy and have to sit down again.

By the end of two pages I’m so proud of myself that I have to text the Manly Fireplug and tell him of my progress. He very kindly congratulates me on this stunning achievement, and then I sort of collapse in an exhausted heap. Did I tell you I’m currently writing about the period when I was fourteen, and…well…was ANYONE happy at fourteen?

So I printed out the book-thus-far for the advisor, and tallied it up; as of today, I’ve written 200 pages. This probably isn’t as interesting to you as, say, my sex life with the Manly Fireplug. Maybe neither of these subjects interest you. But I don’t have much else to offer you, becaue I’m not really thinking about anything except these two subjects, more or less continuously. It’s what I got, people. Cut me some slack.

Where I attempted to get the Manly Fireplug into a pair of rhinestone-encrusted mouse ears, to no avail. Some people are simply hung up on their masculinity, present company included.

I’ve been thinking about aphorisms. Two in particular. “Be careful what you ask for” seems to be the theme of the last six months. Most writers dream of long stretches of uninterrupted time, which I’ve had in abundance and put to dismal use. My only consolation is that having exhaustively surveyed at least five or six people, I’ve come to the conclusion that NOBODY makes good use of abundant free time. Which brings me to aphorism number two: “The busier you are, the more you get done.” This seems to hold up, at least by past experience. So this semester I’ve opted to sign up with an advisor back at Columbia, who’s given me a series of strict deadlines for my book. Since I’m only on day number two I can’t offer much of an analysis yet, but I’ve reached my daily page count and what the hell, here I am posting again. By next week I could be engineering an improved levee system for New Orleans and running for the Bare Chest Calendar contest. I can dream, and you can’t take that away from me.