It's a nice feeling when you've been staring at a screen for three hours.

I just checked my email and in it was a letter from Fusion Literary Magazine offering a $100 prize for best short fiction. The due date is in 2 weeks. I have been feeling like a complete idiot for several reasons:

1) I want to be a writer and I don't have time to write.
2) This is a stupid reason to complain
3) I complain anyways.
4) My writing is unpracticed, undisciplined, uncreative.
5) I really can't force myself to do my homework.
6) The only thing that will make me feel better is if I run away to a tropical island all by myself with lots of food and art supplies.


I have been reduced to a sniveling 23 year old crybaby living in the lap of luxury with food in my belly and a roof over my head and money in my pocket and all the "possibilities" of the world at my doorstep. But here I am facing the disgusting diseases of a first-world country--melancholy, ennui, dissatisfaction, distaste, dreams.

I always thought the writer leads a romantic life. She retires into the mountains in a Sandburgesque house with a goat farm and a writing desk at a sunny window. Writing is given the respect it deserves--days to muse over an idea, hours in the morning, hours after lunch. Whenever the fancy strikes, she is free to rush to her desk and record the genius. She has time to empty her mind and wander through the woods gaining inspiration from spiders and ants and eagles. The writer is not disrespected by other responsibilities. Her sole frustration is lack of inspiration, upon which she packs up her bags and moves to Paris, Prague, Peru.

Writing is easy for the writer.

She doesn't ever write crap. Everything is publishable.

--------------

Okay, so I know THAT is not how it happens. But I don't even know where to begin anymore.

I don't have the energy to create.

I think this weekend I will be getting to know the beach again.

When is the last time I went on a walk? Probably just before this semester started. There was a scene that inspired me--little dewdrops hanging on a fence. I wanted to write a poem. I still remember what it looked like:


On a Fence

these little ornaments
bells
are crystal-dew
they can shake
and music make
f
a
l
l ing to

the ground
ou
a regrettable s nd
like glass breaking