practice.

I went to the Julia Alvarez reading at the Union last night. I had to, because I was making my students go, but I went also because I did enjoy the book. Funny how I love something until I have to teach it. She read some poetry, and it was lovely. I really am starting to enjoy poetry now.

In any case, after she spoke and we got our books signed, I went to the bar/pub/shitty Wackadoos restaurant with Matt and Diego. We were talking about writing and how we're doing with our manuscripts. The three of us are in thesis hours, and we're slated to graduated in spring. The problem is that we don't feel ready for it, material-wise.

Matt is on a schedule with his thesis advisor, and he turns in one story every two weeks. He says they aren't good, but I doubt it. Diego and I are on more relaxed schedules with our advisor; we are also in a workshop with him this semester. So I feel like I'm turning in stories, even though I should technically be turning in twice as much as I am at the moment. I am officially on a turning-in schedule with Holly, which is great. We have to turn in a minimum of ten pages to each other every Sunday. We are keeping one another accountable until December. Although we both feel like we turned in shit last week. I digress.

I mentioned how I feel like I never write. When I try, my head gets in the way and I'm not productive. Shit, I wrote more when I was an undergraduate student than I write as an MFA student. It's ridiculous. During the first week of this semester, I said, "I'm enrolled in three thesis hours a week. It's still a class, even though I don't go anywhere. I need to set time aside every week and write." I never was good at online classes; out of sight, out of mind. It's the seventh week of the semester and I have yet to write during my designated writing times.

Diego writes a page a day. He makes himself do it. That's going to be my new thing.

I sat down this morning and I tried to write my page. I'm turning in a story on Thursday that I hate (and that I workshopped over the summer with the crew. I meant to post about that and never did. Maybe I will soon.). The story has gotten worse. So I tried to come up with new ideas. I read Steve Almond's My Life in Heavy Metala couple months ago, and I really liked it. I was trying to something edgy, and then I kept thinking, that's stupid. I'm not edgy. I'm Jessica. So I started looking for pictures or paintings to inspire me because sometimes that works, but I didn't find anything. Beesley came over to my big chair and curled up on my lap, so I had my hot computer and my miniature-schnauzer-heating-blanket distracting me. Then I went to the AWP website to see if the schedule was up for the Chicago conference, and it's not. Then I looked at the job listings and realized that I am NEVER going to find a job.

It was all very depressing.

So I traveled over to the Writer's Digest website. I used to get a subscription, but I found that most of their stuff repeated every few issues, and it wasn't too helpful. They have writing prompts on their website. It took a while, but I found a good one. And I wrote a single-spaced page.

It was a nice feeling.

And if any of it turns out to be good, I'll post it.