Just as Hemingway wrote 500+ words per day, I’ll sprint for the same over the next 34 minutes. Or before 12a. Tired. Thankfully, tomorrow off. So tempted to quit right now. Just shut off the monstrous laptop device, go to sleep. I blame what was left in that ’09 AV Cab bottle. Tasted better tonight, I thought. The sign of a superior wine design. Didn’t sell a thing today. There’s always the next assignment. I’m using the same language with AV as I did in my cubeNOTES, while at the box. Not fair to AV Winery. Attitude change, now… Read an article, actually an interview, today, with a well-circulated author compatriot of mine, that completely turned me away from ever attempting to publish “traditionally.” He said that he was only paid 40-something cents per copy sold of his novel. How is that in any way ethical? He also said that editors and other “staff” gut your work like it wasn’t marketable in the first. If anyone ever touched my art with that beastly haste, I don’t know what I’d do. I’d more than likely react outside the page, if you know my intent. Writing, Art, is more than personal. It’s sovereignly cognitive. It’s a Life. It’s MY “religion.” So, stop wondering why we Artists are obsessively guarded with our pieces.
The weather today, in AV, and all around SoCo, gorgeous. Would have loved to just hike up that hill and stop, scribble by a vine. My exhaustion increases. Maybe because I’m writing in bed. I should go sit at the desk, make the session official. This is “unprofessional” writing, is it not, working under covers, with pillows at my back like this? Should ask someone at the box, one of the “managers.” They seemed to know everything about “professionalism.” They made it known to all of us that they knew so much about…so much. What I know, that Cab I just finished sipping was inscrutably sibylline. Hope my wine turn out even a blink that brilliant. Wait, with my sister, the young oeno-professor as my conductor/instructor, it more than inarguably will. It’ll be prophetic. Pushing me, surprisingly speedily, into the indi winemaker role. Writing though terroir, varietal. And writing about my journey as a winemaker. [Need to keep reading in that book she bought me, just realized…]
Wondering if I should wake early to write, or allow Self to sleep in–gambling with whatever surplus time I might find. Becoming a challenge with winery gigs, time with little Kerouac. Shouldn’t have had this Cab. Its effects will surely be with me come A.M. Still have a little water in the bottle by bed, the orange-flavored bubbles. 7 days till the chapbook’s due. Should open that doc now, see what I can add before horizontal and off.
So much writing I forgot about, reading through these documents on the monster. Well, I’m a publisher of Self now, and I say, “Publish it all.” Words have meaning, all of them. I wrote them for a reason. That moment, those moments, were spent writing in some pragmatism. So, to the chapbook… Read through some of my Literary Lunches, while at the box. So glad I spent those hours by mySelf, writing. And not with other boxies, complaining about conditions–gossiping, wishing. I know what you’re thinking, “Why do you keeping talking and writing about it if it was so abhorrent?” Answer, “It’s material, all of it.” I was writing on THEIR dime, in that cube. They made me rich, these manuscripts thick. Joke’s on me, but more especially them. Wine devils, grape snakes…
500+ words. Now, rest. The sensibility strands, now still. Putting Self to rest, before ill.
3/8/12, Thursday (11:53pm)