the pressure cooker's boiling

but there's nothing inside to cook.

I keep feeling this intense need to be doing something, until I realize there's nothing to do. Must be a holdover from school and feeling like there's always something to do. It's been interesting, because of course there's always something I could be doing, but nothing I absolutely have to do by next week, say, or tomorrow, but I just have this urgency about things that in reality, I have plenty of time to get done.

my small goals about my writing have been part of this effort, and as I did them I wondered if I was wasting my time, if I was just doing them to feel less guilty, but it turns out, the writer's workshop application is simple: 2 to 3 short stories, or less than a 100 pages of an excerpt from a novel. And my little goals are actually a means to that end. so all this lashing I've been enduring from guilt [you're not doing enough, you're not producing enough, you're not enough!] is actually the true waste of time.

and, the period to send applications is from November to January, so I've still got plenty of time.

I've been sharing my work more with friends, and what I like about it is that it forces me to look at my work anew. It forces me to wonder what they might think. It forces me to face the truth. What I've been writing is good, but it's still lacking some things: the anger that fuels my wanting to write about the working class lifestyle, the grittiness of that life, and the way it affects everything. In other words, the work is still superficial in a lot of ways, and sharing it with other people makes me realize there's still far more to add.

I had my first meeting of what I hope will someday be a thriving writer's group style thing, that was just me and a school friend reading our work to each other.

I have been reading the work of my friends and sending back my comments.

the more things I do that are writerly, the more I feel like one.

as I grapple with choosing between fiction and non-fiction, I am considering an internship again. It is so easy to get into that writer's body, and I feel like I've spent a long time preparing, like getting ready for a day at the beach, just to be exposed to the elements and the eyes, and I wonder when I'll be ready to bare it all.