Free Write

...
...
...
Just write. Write anything. I will write something brilliant in a moment. I will write something brilliant in a moment. In a moment. In a moment.

I'd force this on my students what seems like years ago. A lifetime ago. Back when I was older. Back when I had a job at a university and not an internship in a theatre. Standards of success mean nothing. It's all bullshit. In May I was adjunct faculty; from now until January 11th, I will make 9 dollars a day. Upward mobility, how fickle a bedfellow you are.

But I miss teaching. Kind of. I mean I do. I miss figuring out how to reach them. Figuring out how to make them figure it out.

I will write something brilliant in a moment. I will write something in a moment. Brilliant.

I miss some of my students. The weird ones. The ones who wanted to fuck up the system and weren't worried about the grade. I miss the art students. I miss the projects they would pick when they admitted to themselves that their interests were valid: LOST. Tattoos. Pirates. Jon Stewart. Dr. Seuss. The politicalization of the food pyramid.

I'd get them writing. It was a writing course. Academic writing, but what's that mean really. Where's the line? Let loose. Learn what words do. Learn rhythm. Learn how to manipulate the sound of a pause that you make out of the combination of a halting word and a well-placed semi-colon.

There are lessons I miss. The purpose of punctuation. What a period does to the mind that a comma doesn't. Deconstructing your own default mode of writing, that mode of writing that you do at 4am the night before a five page paper is due that you know will somehow get you a decent grade. That rut you did yourself into.

I'm using mine right now. Quick sentence fragments. Staggered rhythm. Pretty soon I will throw in a longer sentence to make sure the reader knows that I am not retarded and can string together a cohesive thought.

Writing is a choosing to be in control.

There are things I miss.