Down with blocks.

This week, I feel as though I've barely had words to spare, even for myself. Tonight, I relocated my copy of Professors as Writers, one of the writing guidebooks that didn't make the trip to England with me last year, and read a couple of its chapters. Maybe it has to do with the fact that one of my classes launches into Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this week, and that I'm reading Through the Looking-Glass (possibly for the first time) in order to supplement our discussions, but somehow I've convinced myself that I can turn my world upside-down again, just by force of decision and will. Of course, I have a long, long history of making ambitious schedules, failing to carry them out (because they're well-nigh inhuman), and then, in my grand frustration, calling myself self-denigrating names. But at the very least, I'm hoping that my attempt to re-set my priorities will result in a daily practice more in line with what I want to do with this life.

Who knows--I may even restart my word count, though perversely, my first writing task is a reduction, since the journal to which I submitted the essay on which I have been working intermittently since February has requested that I trim eight to ten pages (out of about thirty-six--not such an unreasonable request, simply a suggestion that I sacrifice some darlings if I'm going to see this one in print). Perhaps I'll restart the word count as a negative page count.

Whatever happens tomorrow, though, I'm now constantly calling to mind the fact that everything, from here on out, comes into being through the smallest of increments: one little thing at a time. Bird by bird.