(cl)ashes

in

Been doing the newsletter for more than ten years and a blog for even longer and I still don't have a clue how to balance things out: what do I share publicly, what do I save for Sunday? is Sunday a review of the week previous, a revision of / synthesis? do I use all of the pieces from the week to construct something new? is it simply something new?

A clash of Annie Dillard's exhortation in THE WRITING LIFE with this writing life, at least as it stands at present (same river twice, etc etc):

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now... Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and you find ashes." 

Every week being new effort to understand it?

Of course, the real question may be why I'm continuing to wonder about it at all, a conflict between my usual whenever/whatever and that OCD need for (faux) certainty in an calling that feeds on uncertainty.

"give it all..." (maybe, probably)

in

Next newsletter taking shape – thought I still have to decide on the main essay/ramble, but it'll come to me, probably.

For some reason – idiocy / punishment gluttony? – I decided it would be a good idea to resurrect three abandoned projects as my sides (I take Wednesdays and the weekend to work on these side things, with the goal that they be as different from the MainFictionThing as humanly possible). Still have to decide on a final form, but I do want to have some kind of "mainstream" (read: not my usual weird shit though still, probably weird shit – just written in mostly complete sentences) series / world to revisit over and again. This trio might be it, them, maybe.

Balancing a desire to write something in this space every day (these do, if nothing else, provide me a way to work on something else when I'm stuck in the main something) and to save it for Sunday but I keep coming back to Annie Dillard's words in THE WRITING LIFE:

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now."

Consider these words to be thus given, spent.