I’m in Columbia, SC tonight, staying at Tara’s while she’s in Calgary. We met up for a few hours last night and had dinner before she left at 4 AM. I spent the majority of the day on the USC campus, attempting to piece together a workable manuscript from the 170+ pages of printed material I have available to me from the last two years, but that was not a pleasant exercise. The only thing I felt I really accomplished was transferring one of the stories I did in June into the poetry folder– it seems the most likely candidate to lead off the collection, if there is a collection in all of this. Considering how often I look at animals with people properties (like talking cats), people with animal qualities (like the city of Galveston turning into owls), and things that are half-animal, half-something else, you’d think I would have a pretty decent chunk working together. But, I have a lot of work to do if I want to piece together a collection that I want other people to see.

It’s only day 3 of the month but already I’m terribly frustrated with the poem-a-day exercise. This is natural– I think I was five days in last time before I was certain I had nothing to contribute– but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s frustrating. I spent almost six hours of the day today trying to get something going and all I came up with was another installment in the Expert Advice sequence, which was really exciting to me for three days in April.