Unintended Accomplishments

...there's a title for a book for me, later, that's for sure.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't get a whole lot done today, to be honest.

To be fair as well, I didn't wake up until around 1PM. Yes, that's right. 1PM. Because on weekends, I can actually sleep. Sometimes. Well, most of the time.

I did, however, write a Shakespearean Sonnet for my Poetry Workshop class/professor, just to prove to him/them that not all of my poetry is freeform and/or without meter. And also to prove that yes, while I may avoid form and meter whenever possible, whether actively or passively, I can write in it.

My writing has been on a high note as of late; I don't know if I've reached that point of the semester where I've come into a groove that lets me produce consistently good work in one form or another (whether that be with my poetry or in my papers/essays/midterms), or if I'm just getting better in general with more practice. I'll probably never be able to tell, to be honest. It's really about finding inspiration more than anything else, I think. I've been examining my surroundings more, whether on purpose or subconsciously, and writing about whatever comes into my head. Keeping my poetry journal on or around my person at any given time helps immensely as well, at least for my creativity -- and I think, perhaps falsely or otherwise narcissistically -- that the vast majority of my new stuff (which, of course, never sees the light of day in workshop, and is either quietly added to my portfolio for my thesis, edited into my book manuscript, or ferreted off to a journal in a packet of submissions) holds up when compared to a lot of stuff I see in issues of Poetry or other journals...if not at times surpassing it.

That's a bold statement, I know. I also know that a lot of what I see published in journals (and sometimes, even collected books like the Best American series), is simply awful or just boring. I've never said my stuff is great, because a lot of it isn't -- and, as I've said before, I consider myself lower-middle-class when it comes to my poetry compared to the rest of our program's writers -- but a lot of it's better than what I see getting published these days. It's frustrating because at least on an unconscious level of some sort, I know I'm biased toward my own work, but I also know that even in our program, in our department at Flat State University, we have a lot of good writers who are getting rejections left and right from journals and other publications -- with very few acceptance letters, if any. There are a few of us who have been lucky enough to be told we're good enough to be published in a journal in the past year or two, but that number is very few in comparison to the number of submissions we've all collectively sent out. Meanwhile, we all look at the shit those journals publish every month and ask ourselves, quietly, How the fuck did this get in? Was someone blowing an editor?

Yes, I realize I am the head nonfiction editor of our school's literary journal, which accepts manuscripts at least nationally, if not internationally. Nobody's blowing me, believe me. What gets in gets in because it's at least marginally worthy of being published, because it's good writing, and at least four other people agree with me that it is when a piece is accepted.

At least it's not like the journal at WVU, my undergraduate school, a yearly journal called Calliope. That journal was basically a vehicle for all of the editors to reject everything but one another's works. At least it was when I was a student there, anyway. 90% of what was published in that journal came from someone on the journal's own staff.

For example, I had a story called "Traffic Lights." It was a nonfiction piece. Callope rejected it outright, unceremoniously. It ended up winning the 2005 Waitman Barbe Creative Writing Award for nonfiction -- probably the most prestigious writing award the school gives out to undergraduates in each genre.

Just goes to show you that most journals' staffs have their heads up their asses.

Anyway.

What I'm trying to say is that my writing has hit a good clip, and I'm hoping it doesn't stop anytime soon. While it's going, I'm writing as much as I can, because I know I'll hit a snag or a lull at some point in the future and will possibly need to fall back on some of this stuff.

In other news, it's been a rather quiet and uneventful weekend thus far, and for me it's only half over. I've taken care of all of my "clerical" tasks already (read: all of the work for my students), and all I need to do for the rest of the weekend is read, write a short response paper, and prepare for the shortened week ahead of me. Should be fairly simple enough, really. I'm slowly getting all of my work done for my classes, and it's not yet as hard or rushed as I thought it would be. I may be thinking about that differently in, say, three weeks or so when Thanksgiving week approaches and I'll be writing/finishing my papers as well as grading those of my students', but for right now I'm in a mostly comfortable space. I don't feel the weight of graduate school on me as much as I was expecting to be feeling it at this point of the semester, so that's a plus. No, I may not have gotten a lot done yet this weekend, but at least I actually have the time to take care of a lot of it at my own pace....for the moment, anyway.

I went to Walmart yesterday afternoon, again. Yes, on a Saturday afternoon. I need to learn to stop doing such things, but when I run out of things like cigarettes, bread, milk, cat food, and coffee, it's time to go to Walmart. It's just my luck that I tend to run out of those things on Saturday afternoons, and all (or mostly all) at once.

Still, I live a boring life, folks. Going to Walmart allows me to see the slack-jawed yokels of Kansas in their wild and natural habitat, for better or worse. Sometimes it's the little things in life that amuse me the most greatly. Luckily, I never go shopping without a budget or a game plan (read: I know exactly how much money I'll spend and exactly what I'll need, and rarely deviate from that course).

At Walmart, the Monte Carlo began dripping a little coolant again. Not much, though -- just a baseball-sized spot on the pavement. Looks like I'll have to pour a little more of the stop-leak into the radiator and check its levels again. As it's getting colder now, I'll need to pick up some Heet for the gas tank during one of my upcoming shopping trips and use it every few fill-ups or so. Gotta keep the car in as tip-top shape as possible, of course, until I can get enough money to put some work into it. Maybe run another gas treatment bottle through it on the next fill-up, too; it's been awhile since I put one of those in the car. Staying prepared for nasty weather/cold is key; even when/if I put the car in the garage (something I've done exactly twice since I bought it, both times during hailstorms), it's still cold in there in the winter.

Still, she's treated me pretty good thus far for me putting 150-200 miles on her every week, as well as occasionally driving her up to 103mph. For a car as old as that one is, and for one with 218,300 miles, I couldn't ask anything more out of my low-rent Batmobile.

One of my students (as well as his entire family) collects Camaros; it's all they drive. I made the comment in class this week that the Camaro is the poor-man's Corvette, and the Monte Carlo is the poor-man's Camaro. I own a Monte Carlo. Welcome to my life, I'm double-poor.

As an aside, what I wouldn't give to *collect* Camaros.

On that note, I need to get to bed if I want to get anything accomplished in the morning/afternoon at all. I may still have the second half of my weekend ahead of me, but most of it will be spent working on the stuff I need to work on during that time.