A phone chat with my editor this week. And last night I went to a poetry event at a favorite new bookstore, and saw a couple of friends and literary crushes read. Other than that, a boring week writing-wise. But boring in a good way – necessarily boring. It means I’ve been sticking mostly to my routine, reading, revising, printing, typing, mornings and some afternoons, in hourlong blocks.
I say “mostly” because there are days when I start writing a little later, or end a little earlier. It’s usually because of some problem I have to work through, some momentary knot of uncertainty about whether it can be worked through, and how the solution might land. It’s then that I have to remind myself to be boring with my routine. To stick to my script, and keep stuffing the pickle jar for my subconscious mind. Let time and biology do its work.
Back in 2017 when I was on tour in Chicago for See You in the Cosmos, I was a week behind George Saunders, who’d rolled through for Lincoln in the Bardo. He’d had the same baseball-loving author escort, and done an event at the same Abraham Lincoln bookstore (there’s only the one – but still!) I’d felt, in a way, like a temporal shadow. An echo.
