tiny dump of a studio apartment

So long. Solongsolongsolong.

I am pretending to be a real, live, writer, now. There is little time for any writing, when you're pretending to be a reallivewriter. You just have time to read other people's things and write web advertisements and proofread letters for other people. Just have time to pay your dues. Pay your everythings.

But seriously, I can't even believe the sheer volume of reading and writing I have to do for school this semester. Also, just when I'd thought my freelance clients forgot about me, I got four emails in one day. I'm sending off a web ad late; I told her it would be Friday morning. That never happened. Now, at 10:04 PM on Sunday night, I feel that it's the best time to actually write it.

I wrote lots of things, this weekend. Two poems. One short narrative. No, two short narratives. Started, failed, started, failed on a postcard story set in Hope, Alaska (because I just like the name -- needless to say, the metaphor was way too obvious and the whole thing collapsed every time I tried to spin it). I wrote award applications for meagre sums, swearing up and down that I'm a good student and also a good person and pleasejustgivememoneybeforeiwasteawayinsqualor. Yes. All in one word. I hope they choose me!

I read lots of things, this weekend, as well. Three essays on poetic theory, one of which I truly enjoyed, one that I didn't understand, and one that I understood, but was bored with. I read two chapters in Betsy Lerner's "The Forest for the Trees" but I retained hardly anything. I read an essay called "Growing Up Naked" about a girl's first attempt at stripping -- she had to wrestle herself out of her bra and she could barely walk in the high heels foisted upon her virgin feet by an older, more gristled, French stripper named Yvette. I read the first several chapters of Olivia Goldstein's roman a clef novel, "The Bestseller." I'm supposed intuitively know which real-life publishers, editors and writers she is referring to in the novel. I have no clue whatsoever. It's quite dreary so far. It could be titled, "Don't Try Being a Writer, Because You'll Never Catch a Break, And Even if You Do, You Will Still Hate Your Life and Wind Up a Miserable Old Hack--That Is, if You Don't First Commit Suicide in Your Tiny Dump of a Studio Apartment." Naturally, it's quite uplifting. I still have to finish my book club book (they're all waiting, I know, I'm sorry) and some more school-related reading to do before Tuesday, but first:

I have to write this job ad. This SIX-PAGE-DESCRIPTION job ad. Tiny Dump of a Studio Apartment, here I come. Miserable Old Hack, et cetera.

But I'm working on it; working on something.

Best News of the Weekend: I found (or rather my mom found, in a discman that none of us have touched in the last three years) my lost (and deeply mourned) Tegan & Sara "So Jealous." Now I will listen to it while I fold laundry (AFTER I WRITE THE JOB AD) and remember the good times I had with that album. And then: sleep.