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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

These Final Days of June

85º ~ yesterday we set a record at 105º, today cooling down to 95º as the projected high, the humidity continues to remain low, which helps in the heat but means drought, drought, drought...over 90% of the state has entered "severe" drought conditions


These are the dwindling days of my self-imposed homestead writing residency.  The residency is ending in the same way it began, as a niggle in the back of my brain rather than as a planned thing. 

Tomorrow, I'll be taking my one day-trip in June, heading over to Conway, AR to guest lecture and read at the Arkansas Governor's School with my friend James Katowich, a fiction writer.  We will do WITS exercises in the morning session and read our work in the afternoon.  I'm psyched for this on so many levels.  I taught at AGS for three summers after grad school, and it's where I met C.  Some of the poems in Blood Almanac were written while I was teaching at AGS.  Also, the campus of Henrix College is beautiful even in the sweltering heat, and the students (all rising high school seniors of exceptional abilities) are eager to learn.

Today, I did some more major revisions on the poems I composed at the beginning of the month.  I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't draft 30 new poems, but I have been letting my gut guide me throughout this whole exercise and at a certain point, it said "it's time to let things sit and then revise; it's time to get some perspective on the project as a whole."  I have no idea if this is the "right" thing to do, but I do not feel like I've squandered any of this precious time I carved out.  In the end, we all work to our own rhythms.

Oh, I also opened up the mss. document and did a "find/replace" for all of the ampersands, putting them back as ands.  I don't know why I'm fixated on this, but there you go. 

Stay cool, friends and fans of the Kangaroo, stay cool.

6 comments:

Kathleen said...

The gut is a good thing to trust.

Sandy Longhorn said...

Wish that I could live by it more often. Too bad the academic year involves so many set schedules & plans. :)

Molly said...

I agree wholeheartedly with Kathleen. I've been trying really hard to implement the gut's suggestions recently. Congrats on all the good work you've done during your homestead writing residency.

Sandy Longhorn said...

Thanks, Molly!

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

Have fun doing the guest lecture gig.

Here in Ohio where we're vacationing, there's a heat advisory. It's hot all over, baby.

Sandy Longhorn said...

Thanks, Q., it was a blast!

Stay cool, brother.