Today should be quite light though as we transition into T. Wolff and his short stories, examining the form of the short story– and I thought again, and even more intently walking in this morning, across that Mendo parking lot that reminds me of Bend, Or and Sunriver for some reason, that I need to make the writing work, pay for me, itself, get me out of the winery and even the classroom.. teaching 4 classes this term was a mistake, noted and known, now, but it contributes to character, mine, and is showing me attributes I didn’t know I had at this age, or before, at any.  It would be a rational and logical question for a student to challenge me: “If you know so much about writing and novels and short stories and Literature in general then why don’t you write for a living, why don’t you do it?  Why AREN’T you DOING it?” What would I say?  Hope I never get that question.  Not until I am making most of my wages by page’s way.  Then okay.  Planning this morning’s session, and the rest of the day– short stories, the vignettes, submitting.. I do want to publish/”sell” shorter works.  But the time while finishing this novel, the time.. and the commute up here.  Challenges.  Just have to write the shorts like I do the novel: rushed and without stopping.  Not “spontaneous” prose like Kerouac, put panicked paragraphs, rushed writing, speeded scribbles.. delicacy: no time for that, and I wouldn’t make time even if I did.  When it’s rushed it’s more truthful, more real, more luminary.

Got the media key for this campus, so I can use the tech in the classroom.  But I just want to stay here and write, finish this book and one or two standalone shorts– after classes.  I’ll go to the breakroom and ignore everyone that comes in, especially that moody adjunct I saw the other day.  8:50– have to be in room soon, be ahead of the students.. the drive, the sun, the overcast, the coffee, this office, the drive back, my lunch in the fridge here…  Too much almost.  A good excuse for calling in tomorrow, to the winery?  No don’t.  I need to see those grapes.  And I need to check on my Grenache.  Getting distracted now by my own ideas, everything, and Life, and Time– hell with it, I’m just going to live just as all my Artist friends do, inside and out the nucleus.  Was just re-reading Dav’s letter, his last.  I’ll respond today, write from the lunch room here, and inform him of my story and how goes it.  And confess my obsession recent with journalism and journalistic writing styles.. and how I can barely read his handwriting.  Much I love the man, I struggle with his scribbles, especially when his sitting is draped in a hangover.