last stop on the young poet line
Of course I should not be so curmudgeonly. For the first time ever I have five figures (barely) in the bank, and I'm a little mystified about what to do with it all. The plan was to take the money and spin it, Rumplestiltskin-style, into time; and then to spin the time into another book; and I'll give it a shot, but Song of Roland took $20,000 in grant money to finish, and it certainly doesn't seem very prepossessing these days.
I haven't written at all since coming to Nevada; barely anything since summer. It's been the longest hiatus in years. My understanding is that these extended fallow periods lead either to a complete reimagining of the art, made manifest in something wonderful; or else to a decision that I'm getting too old and am tired of starving and scrounging, and ought to pack up the typewriter for good and start over with something completely unrelated, like feeding orphans or teaching Faulkner to nineteen-year-olds. I suppose the next months will bear out which.
