365 days of being a writer: day 3

I read a lot today. Does that count? Specifically, I read Dear Sugar's advice to a writer, which boils down to 'write like a motherfucker.' It got me thinking most about the idea of being too high and too low. Like the letter-writer, I am both "potential incarnate" and also, "too lacking in direction or discipline" in my own mind, too.

It's very convenient, this idea of having a lot of potential, right? Because it allows me to stay in a state of trying rather than doing. "If only I had the time/money/macbook I would be the best writer EVER." Or, "if only I could do some more traveling, I'd have something REALLY worth writing." Sugar says, just get off your high-horse, and out of your own navel. Get grounded, on the floor, and write.

The writing today was for a magazine piece that will hopefully be out in the winter. It took an hour to come up with 50 words. At that rate... mumble mumble. Can I call it a commission if there's no money involved? At least, it's writing and it will be published. This is about getting my words out into the world, not making a million dollars. Unless you have a million dollars and would like to be the wealthy patron to my tortured artist, in which case, you know. Holla.

The rest of the day was spent freaking out about the uncertainty of my job (AGAIN) and studying astronomy homework.

I really enjoy the visuals that my brain makes when contemplating the birth, life, and death of stars. Spinning clouds of colorful, ionized gasses, coalescing, igniting, then exploding out past the reaches of the knowable galaxy. There are bubbles of star strata and helium flashes and gamma bursts and x-ray pulsars. It's very sci-fi, but also real. That is ultimately what catches my attention. I want to be able to write about the lighthouse-like beacon of an unimaginably dense neutron star flashing on-off-on-off out in the middle of thousands of millions of miles of cold, empty, quiet nowhere and make it matter.