Here we go again.

Here we go again.

April 1, 11:38 p.m., I’m working as fast as I can to finish Hotshots! so it will go out tomorrow–today no longer being an option–and I remember that I said I would blog every day this month.

So I close Hotshots!, open To write is to write is to write, and start typing. Not thinking, just typing.

11:41. Charlie Rose is conversing with Roger Rosenblatt and Stanley Fish. They’re saying all kinds of memorable things about writing, but I’m not fast enough to write them down.

11:44. But here are some scraps. Writing is for some students the site of anxiety. Couldn’t get Harvard students to get anything original out of themselves until he closed the door and said, “Write. No throat clearing. Write.”

11:46 Clip of Ian McEwan. Beginnings are difficult. You finally find yourself in control. That’s the real pleasure. How can you not write? But always craving to reach the end.

11:47  It’s in my DNA. To figure things out and explain to other people. Same joy as teaching, but teaching is harder–pesky students aren’t always cooperative.

11:48 Rarely know what I’m thinking before I write. Don’t have anything to explain. Living in the mystery and discovering what you’ve said when you look back. Write what you know? Shelley: Must learn to imagine what we know.

11:49 Write what you want to know. A problem or a puzzle you want to figure out what’s going on.

11:50 Satisfaction from teaching. Don’t want to let them down. Writing lonely. Give self to students selflessly. If you fail them, you want the time back.

11:51 How do you know when it’s finished? Have a feeling, like music. Easier to know when finished than to know when begun. Eliminate the first paragraph.

11:52 In search of something. In search of answers. Then surprise when what you’ve written raises a question you didn’t know before and you want to follow it. We express ourselves, and the selves we express are different.

11:53 Quotation–last lines from “Dover Beach.” Writing makes suffering beautiful. Quotation–from George Herbert’s “The Forerunners.” Verbal thing that knocks your socks off.

11:55 Goodnight.