might write = quite trite

I got a letter from a publisher last week. It's a sick trick they play, making you send in a self-addressed stamped envelope so that the rejection arrives cloaked in your own familiar script. Earlier that week I'd re-read A Moveable Feast (Paris! Paris! Paris!) and Hemingway's line about writing one true sentence (blah blah blah) was lurking in my brain, setting up roadbloacks everytime I sat down to write. The poem I'd sent in was the most true and the least sentimental thing I've ever written. Now what?

I'd kicked around the idea of being a nurse for awhile, never letting it settle into real consideration until I opened the letter from Poetry Magazine. Well, there goes that. I was all set to apply to nursing school until I mentioned my plan to Squirrel & my father who both scoffed outright. The other people I told about my plan invariably cocked their heads and said really? in the same tone the woman used with me on the bus this morning: Baby, since when is okay to wear stripes and polka dots together. Stripes and polka dots are a winning combination, I say. But I'll defer to those who know me best and say I'd make a terrible nurse -- or that being a nurse would make me terribly unhappy. Squirrel said Why don't you just shut up and write? You love rejection! C'mon!

I'm not quite ready to apply to graduate programs, though I'm starting to see the appeal of rigorous, structured exercises to wring the self-indulgence and solipsism out of my writing. I find myself strung up between two poles, believing on the one hand that I walk around apart and alien from everyone else and, on the other, knowing that there is nothing new under the sun, paralyzed by the inability to paint my new love with same three primary colors given to us all.

So this is what I'm going to do: I found an old book full of creative writing exercises and I'm going to do make myself follow them and post them, no matter how dumb they seem. You can be the critic - as honest as you please. And we shall see, and we shall see where the muses lead.