You might say, “Well, I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘mighty’ writer, I just want to “write better.” Fair enough. But it takes a certain might to realize anything, I’d offer. AND, with writing, even the smallest intensification or improvement of effort and ability takes might.
Alas, I start to compose the copy for the Mighty Writer course. Back from nap, about to open a beer on this last day off. Early, but so what. Have to sell.. SELL! MY writings and instruction and the dire nature to everything pulsates and pervades every enclave of my universe.. organize and inventory my writings, even the note to myself yesterday written in the little journalist pages where I wrote “YOU as a brand./See everything you/want in what you/already have.” I have everything I need for the Road, for expansion and exploration.. this is worth celebrating I realize so the beer to be opened, the last of the Dogfish Head 90’s.. me, consummate teacher, loving the image of someone learning, as my teaching style is simply sharing what I’ve learned, and reveling in the reality that Mike Madigan is a forever-learner/student/empirical matriculant— Should be sharing this with my students.. should check email.. thoughts everywhere, which doesn’t surprise me (usually happens when up from a nap with the same thought I descended with still beaming and quaking about my current cognition).
One thing I’ve realized about writing, is that it’s not just writing. It’s not just editing. It’s not just a page… It’s a desire to do it. It’s in your psychology, be it just wanting to “get better” at writing or produce a novel, or memoir, or piece of micro-fiction, or a poem. It’s YOU. It’s in YOU. WRITING is YOU.
More notes for class.. caught up on student emails.. now I post to blog, check in with them all.. write a letter.. inventory my writings, I keep telling myself.. should include that in the Mighty Writer course.. knowing what you wrote and what you want to do with it. And believe me, I’m still learning! I have to slow down.. write just as fast as I always have but when the piece sees its tangibility, slow. “Where do you want it to go?” needs to be posed.
It’s clear the nap was needed for the writing and my day, these dreams and the Road calling me. Students.. their remaining semester… MY remaining semester, the one I said would be perfect. Can still entirely make “perfect”. But what does the perfection entail? Maybe that answer’s not attainable, as what’s entailed is constant in its accumulation and aggrandizement of me and my moments. No conclusion, it’s still being written, so how can I talk about what perfection entails as I have no idea what perfection is, nor have I touched it? It’s mythic, a dream. And I’m not sure I want it, anyway. If I attain perfection, that could mean I no longer need to learn. Such negates my general creative urge.
(3/23/16)