September 23, 2008

Found a way to get Awake! Awake! Deborah back on track. My usual procedure is fast and uninterrupted. This time I let too much–Chicago, Montford Park, the Stock Market-- intervene between sessions at the keyboard, and I forgot what I was writing about. When I went back to read what I had, I recognized that an ending was not coming because I had two different stories, and the end didn’t know which to attach itself to. One of the stories–the first–is more interesting than the other. The second was what I intended; the first and better was what came of its own accord.

C, my student in Intro to Creative Writing, brings me ten or twelve stenographer’s notebooks, in which, cover to cover, both sides of the paper, he has written a journal since January of last year. He has to write them in steno books because he’s left handed and this way his hand’s not always bumping the binding. I feel honored by the gesture, and hope that I think to say the thing he needs to hear. So far he reminds me a good deal of myself, with the sometimes obsessive detail, the lack of subordination between important impressions and trivial ones, the joyful concentration on nature. Though he is far more social than I. When he came into the room with them in his arms I felt such a blaze of protective love toward him. He’s a sturdy young man and probably doesn’t need it, but such emotions are not necessarily bestowed according to need.

It being Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday yesterday, I had a little party with cake and punch for my seminar students.