Between the fourth and fifth floors I start to breathe heavily. We talk on the walk down and on the first few flights of stairs back up but by floor four I no longer feel like talking. By floor six I regret starting and even if I wanted to talk I don’t know how much I could, beyond terse, grunted phrases between breaths. By the time we get back to the ninth floor we both huff and puff and I can feel my heart pounding.

A co-worker and I have taken to getting up and taking a break together and walking down the stairs in our building and walking back up. Partly we want to get more exercise, partly the break and the movement helps with concentration. I also find the exercise a really useful metaphor for writing. I think about these stairclimbs a lot when I really don’t want to be at my keyboard.

I am at a point with a lot of my writing where I am no longer motivated by enjoyment. If I...

I cried when I reread the draft of chapter two. More than once. Four times, maybe five. Tears and full on sobbing, sitting on my bed with the paper in my lap next to the computer. I don’t wish that experience on anyone, but actually I do recommend it.

This last December I printed out my manuscript and read it front to back. I didn’t write it in order. I wrote, I don’t know, let’s say chapter three, then four, then one, then six, then five, then two. I know for sure I wrote two last, when I was really tired, and I wrote it faster than any other chapter. Then I wrote the introduction and conclusion, sent the whole heap off to readers, and moved on to the paid work that demanded my time. I wouldn’t call that an ideal arrangement, but then I never work in ideal conditions. Anyway, this means that in December my read through was the first time I read the manuscript like a reader, in the...

on the bus, making myself write. 602 words in 17 minutes.

schools and intelligence validation

The other day I ended looking at a map of one of the towns where I grew up and I saw the community college where I went to summer camp a few times. It struck me just then that summer camp was basically daycare for older kids. I had a great time at that camp. Among other things, me and some of the other boys would build cars out of lego blocks and ram them into each other until the cars broke. Whoever’s car last the longest won. My mom went to that college.In my head, I put the words in uppercase - My Mom Goes To College. Someone else I knew had gotten a four year degree and was working on a master’s degree, and that phrase was such a big deal it was in all caps - A MASTER’S DEGREE. I now realize that my mom was working on her associate’s degree. I don’t meant to minimize anyone’s...

I’ve decided to make myself get off the internet a bit and write 500 words on some topic, like a kind of column, with a timer running. I am allowing myself only this explanatory note and allusion to my impulse to apologize. [This took 26 minutes, 538 words, not counting these prefatory lines.]

Tonight a bad mood pinched me all over like dry skin in a Minnesota winter. I couldn’t find anything to laugh about. Anything hopeful I thought of came with a big weight attached - sure, my kids are thriving but how will I afford college? Etc. Then I had about a third of a bar of dark chocolate - 72% cocoa, fancy chocolate - and a few really big swigs from the bottle of Makers Mark. It turns out, chocolate and Makers? Great combo, taste-wise and mood-wise. Sure I’m broke, tired, balding, and I apparently can’t eat eggs anymore, but now I’m buzzed, and my mouth’s nice and warm, and I have that...