because he invited me to Google Wave. Sweet!

I appreciated this post at Margaret Lafleur’s blog. If you’re concerned about not being able to “find the time to write” because of having to work or whatever, read it.

I tend to think that holding down a job (or, at the very least, professional and personal commitments outside of MFA requirements) gives a writer…shit, you know, to write about. And also, you know, makes us human. Notice that I’m not saying that people in fully funded programs don’t have outside commitments…of course they do. They may have fewer (no need for job), or they may have more (imagine a fully funded writer with a few kids at home and two ill, elderly parents, for example), but the point is that anyone who is writing anything can’t afford to be engrossed and immersed in writing only, unless by writing we also mean that processing of the world that writers do all the time.

That said, becoming a good writer takes practice. You have to write (and read) a lot. That’s just the way it is, and if you’re a writer, this part really shouldn’t be a burden. It should be a release. So, if you’re fully funded, hell, use those 8 hours a day to write. And also make time for your family and to walk your dog and water your plants and do your laundry and watch a ball game. And if you’re not fully funded, put as much time in as you can without ignoring other necessities and relationships that matter. Maybe it ends up taking you longer to get good than it does for peers who can use the time you’re spending as a bank teller or a phone rep or whatever to write. So what? Didn’t Faulkner write The Sound and the Fury while he was a college campus security guard? Even if I’m misremembering that detail, you get the point. If you’re a writer, you’re always writing anyway. You’re writing at the grocery store and while you’re driving and while you’re out dancing or jogging or working or even spending time with your children. That’s a part of your brain you don’t (can’t) turn off…it’s what makes you want to be a writer, what makes you you.

So what makes someone who wants to be a writer and thinks like a writer into a writer? I think it’s probably then sitting down and writing. So make the time for that, whatever your schedule and situation. I think it’s true that you won’t get better unless you dedicate serious time to reading and writing. I don’t see exceptions.

In the last 30 years, Alice Munro has appeared more than anyone else in Best American Short Stories. See here. She’s been included 18 times (Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike are tied for second at 9 each). Not that anyone’s counting.

I’ve been thinking that once you decide you believe in reality, really any reality, it’s not such a huge jump to decide to believe in God. If you believe in existence, it doesn’t seem so hard to believe that something caused it. I know that it doesn’t have to be God that caused it, but it ends up being something mysterious we can’t really account for in any case. Chicken, egg, ad infinitum. So it’s either God or not God, but the idea that it’s God doesn’t seem more outlandish to me than the other options, once I’ve decided to believe that I am, in fact, here, that the physical word exists and et cetera.

So if I believe in God, I can probably also believe that I might see my dead loved ones again. I might not, but it doesn’t really seem too outlandish to hope that I might or to even believe that it’s possible, so long as I’m already believing that I exist and the universe with me.

Oh, how far from certainty. How utterly, blessedly, beautifully far.

“But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I’m keeping here with me.”

is, of course, a great song by The Smiths. It’s also a great cover by Noel Gallagher. There’s a pretty great clip on YouTube of NG talking about Morrissey and Johnny Marr (he loves them) capturing the quintessence of pop stardom (which is looking absolutely ridiculous and absolutely, effortlessly cool at the same time).

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is also the name of short story I’m currently writing. My prose lit seminar has really helped me see material in places I’ve been ignoring and is helping me think in better dramatic fashion. That’s not to say, by the way, that my Light That Never Goes Out story is about the song. The song (really just the title) is a jumping-off point, and what I’m learning from close readings of Cheever, Munro, O’Connor, Bellow, etc in the context of the seminar is helping me think about story in general and about specific stories.

For the past two or three years, I’ve been thinking how super-clever I am for comparing Foo Fighters (I like them) to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (I love them). Now that Foo Fighters greatest hits is out, everyone is making that comparison. I’ve read at least three reviews with this basic conceit in the last few days. I’m not saying I thought of it first (my friend Darren Croucher did) but it’s become obligatory. The new Petty live anthology looks awesome, by the way. That’s a band and a half.

I definitely feel like “What is the point? What’s the point of making music anymore?” I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that’s how I’ve always created — I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I’m wondering, what’s the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone’s just downloading music? And I’m starting to get sick of my conceptual ideas. I’m tired of these grand, epic endeavours and wanting to just make music for the joy of making music and having it be immediate and nothing to do with the industry itself, which, y’know is suffering right now of course.

And I think it has to do with a creative crisis too. I’m wondering what am I doing? What is a song even? I’m questioning, what’s the point of a song? Is a song antiquated? Does it have any power any more? The format itself — a narrative song with accompaniment — is really beyond me now. Like, I feel that The BQE is not really a song, it’s not really a movie, it’s not really just a soundtrack. It’s so ambiguous and diversified, it seems to lack shape. And the expressway itself lacks shape, so I feel like it’s all related to this existential crisis: Me versus the BQE, or me versus my work, y’know? And I don’t think I can win; I feel like it’s a losing battle…

-Sufjan Stevens.

Some people will think this sounds self-important or whatever. I suppose if you’ve never had a crisis of faith about anything, you might think that. More here.

This is from “The Displaced Person” by Flannery O’Connor:

I don’t presume to know if it will do the same for you, but it made me feel the way maybe church is supposed to. When I get to the last few lines I want to start singing the refrain from “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens in a kind of kairotic response.

When I was 17, I wanted to be two things.  Joseph Conrad and this:

Not much has changed.