Madeleine Plagued by Doubts

I will never finish Story #2.
Story #2 is so difficult--how did I ever think I could write it?
Or write anything at all?
And, anyway, no one will want to read it.
It's too long.
It sounds like the other story I wrote.
Why can't I just write a simple story?
Contests want stories that are 250, 3000, 5000 words long, yet I can't write a story that's 250, 3000, 5000 words long.
I must be a bad writer.
I would love to write a simple story!
I could win a contest if I wrote a simple story.
I should not want to win contests.
I should not even enter contests.
The NYTimes Book Review said today that writers write their best fiction before they are 40, so all my best fiction is behind me already.
He has an agent!?! How did he get an agent?
I'm happy for him.
I am wasting my time.
I should write the novel I want to write, not the stories.
No one reads stories.
No one reads novels.
I always write the wrong things.
Why aren't I one of those people who write the right things?
Why aren't I one of those people who get encouraging notes from editors at literary journals?
A rejection letter would be so much more encouraging if it included an encouraging note.
As soon as I finish my book, publishing will die.
I can't even write an interesting blog post.
I wish my doubts were more interesting.
Joyce Carol Oates has interesting doubts, I bet, if she has any.
She doesn't have any.
I can't manage my time.
I should write a play.
I should write a screenplay.
I don't send out my work enough.
I don't send out my work to the right places.
Story #3 will be even harder to write than Story #2, and Story #4 will be even harder to write than Story #3, and so on and so on and so on...

What's Up With Agnes Is... The Miseducation of Rita

No posts for a couple of days. I've been lying low not wanting to make Madeleine too crazy with manic posting. Plus had to spend two entire days dusting books and making slipcovers for our bookshelves. I also threw out a bunch of stuff to try and make a little way for the impending influx of giant amounts of stuff from New Haven, but mostly it was bookshelf slipcovering.
Our gentleman friend Kruger was visiting us from Texas. Kruger is amazing--a writer who is now doing speechwriting for muckity mucks--and Kruger smokes. It wasn't too bad for me, though last night he smoked about three cigarettes in the apartment as we were having a drink and unwinding/getting ready for bed. All night I had smoking dreams. I also dreamed that I had a bunch of pets and they all died. The death toll was significant: two hamsters, a cat, a kitten, and a puppy. I am not sure what this means. Dear Reader, any suggestions? I know that you've been analyzed....

And for those who aren't Our Dear Reader, she and I have engaged in a weight loss battle. We shall see who loses those 15 pounds first. I think it is going to be me, actually, as I am fierce and determined. But ODR has much better tits than I do. Sigh.

DAY 11

What's up with Madeleine?, or Actually, What's up with Agnes?

I woke up early this morning and among(st?) the things on my agenda for today--I just remembered that I was going to get my driver's license renewed today! Is it already too late to do that? Will I be in line at the DMV (I almost wrote DMZ) for the entire day if I go now?--was to write on the Mildred, and to read Agnes's entry on the Mildred. And to my surprise Agnes has TWO new entries on the Mildred! Yay, Agnes! That was my first thought, followed quickly by: Boo, Madeleine! Then my third thought was that this is not a competition, Madeleine, and my fourth thought was why do I always turn EVERYTHING into a competition? Why, if someone is doing well, do I turn that into a referendum on me, i.e., Agnes's writing on the Mildred only highlights the fact that I have NOT been writing on the Mildred, not meeting my deadlines, not holding up my end of the bargain, not working hard enough, not doing everything I need to do to change my situation and make all of my dreams come true? Fifth thought: Actually, I am much better about that--that being "turning everything into a competition," "making everything a referendum on me"--than I used to be. (Thought number five is dedicated to Our Dear Reader.) Sixth thought: this just proves what I thought about the Mildred all along, i.e., that it only works or it works best if both Agnes and I are writing on it, that we spur each other on to write on the blog; this is exciting and gives new energy to the Mildred! Then finally the seventh thought: I am so glad Agnes is still not smoking.

I would like to train myself to skip from Thought 1 directly to Thought 6.

Anyway, I am going to renew my license today. If I don't do it today, I will never do it, and I need a valid license before I go on vacation.

I still have plenty of time in the day. I always feel like I don't have enough time in the day, even when I have the entire day free. On free days, I feel like I have to go grocery shopping, for example, and then I have to make dinner at some point and that takes up a lot of time. The good thing about Agnes being back, or one of the many good things, is that she has been making me dinner every night and doing the shopping (see Stepford Wife reference from one of her last entries). But she's away today, and I am off, and I agreed to make dinner. Maybe I will take you out instead, Agnes, if you are reading this.

I can feel the whole day slipping away and it's only 9:30 a.m. This is a problem. But this is how I think a lot of the time. Agnes knows this all to well.

I did write Saturday and Sunday. And I will write today.

I was going to post about something else today--about my new process and how it is working so well, both for Story #2 and for Story #3--but I will save it for tomorrow. The driver's license thing threw me off! Madeleine, get thee to the DMV!

On Fire; Not Burning: In which we hear from Agnes once again

So this is the point in the trajectory when I get very crusty. I start obsessively making agenda-point to-do lists on my iCal and running around. Frankly I like it when I am in this mood, and I do get a LOT of shit took care of. Madeleine, however, does not appreciate it. Why she wouldn't like to get bulldozed by an affectless Stepford Wife is beyond me, but there you go.

It does make things easier to have someone else around--at least when things are going well, which they usually are. But there are drawbacks. As I may have mentioned before, I like to blame other people for things; even if I don't do this consciously, my negative behavior patterns are often reactive. Madeleine leaving town after a visit was often a cue for me to go on a bender, for example. The thing about this transferred blame is that it actually makes me feel less lonely. Doing something wrong or stupid or damaging to oneself (or others) can be redeemed in a perverse way if it was done because of somebody else. It's not my fault means that it is someone else's--and that means that we have a connection with that other person. Maybe not the best connection, but still it is something.

Last night I went to a birthday party for a school friend. It was too soon to be seeing all of those people again. I wasn't drinking, which was probably why it seemed so absolutely impossible to be around other people.

I am not smoking today. No smoking since tuesday morning.

La Agnes Nuova

I am writing this on June 2nd—the second day of the rest of my life—and I am writing it in Brooklyn. I don't know if other people are like this or not, but I fetishize “new beginnings” and this one is no exception. But let me back up a bit.

On Sunday and Monday with the heroic help of the indefatigable Madeleine, I moved completely out of my studio. As one of my classmates said, this was a much more significant thing to me than graduation. Since the year began last fall there was not a single day that I was in New Haven that I did not go to that building, and there were many days that I left it only to take a shower in the gym nearby. And yesterday, although my access card would still have worked and although I was in New Haven, I didn't go back at all. I wonder when the next time I will enter that building will be? I don't feel any animosity toward it, but I don't want to go back there for a long time. I am ready to move on (Self magazine are you listening??? (Is Self magazine even around anymore?)).

I am also unexpectedly excited. Hooray for excitation. Now I am back in the city at a coffeeshop. I am sitting outside and everybody all around me is smoking. They are smoking and talking about quitting. That is the funny thing about cigarettes: they are a reification self-loathing. And the self-loathing is almost universal amongst smokers—even the defiant ones use these shadows to heighten the narrative of their addiction/pose. I am not smoking today. I quit.

Agnes Needs a Cigarette (or 20)

As Madeleine mentioned, this has been a busy time. I remember hearing a story on the radio about a survey of some of the most stressful events in life: death of a loved one, marriage/divorce, having a child, but two of the top ones were: moving and looking for a job/graduating with an expensive degree and no intention of getting, as one graduation card so strangely put it, "a satisfying job with a good salary." Who says something like that to a recent MFA graduate? Oh, yeah, my grandparents from Arizona...

SO, as may come as a surprise to no one, I have been smoking. As everything wraps up and people are packing and moving out of the studio building things get stranger and stranger. I want to be gone, but I also don't like feeling pushed out. Then there was the graduation ceremony itself--the single worst graduation ceremony I have yet encountered. (Though perhaps one day I may be lucky enough to be a faculty member of a worse one--fingers crossed!!!)
Then there is the issue of grad school having put a few pounds on Agnes' once-sylphlike hips. Agnes feeling a little less Agnes than usual. Or a little more, depending on how you look at it.
The good news is that I am rapidly homeward bound. I have a few projects for the apartment and am looking forward to being a predominantly bike-commuter. We joined a CSA this summer so will have lots of fresh vegetables. The apartment lawsuit craziness continues to be a psychological drain, but will be something of a financial boon (for right now, anyhow) in that we aren't obligated by the court to save our rent.

And I am really, really serious about quitting when I am back in the city. Change is good, yes? Yes.

Madeleine Gets Nothing Done

I planned on writing today. I didn't. Not sure why.

Possible reasons: working extra hours at my office the past few weeks; Agnes's graduation (last weekend) and move (this weekend); paralyzing lawsuit developments; I want to write something else.

The lawsuit developments, incidentally, aren't so bad, but they are distracting and make me lose focus. Or I allow them to make me lose focus.

Story #2 is a tough one. This sounds familiar, right, readers? But it IS tough, and it keeps getting longer and longer.

I hate all this complaining! I just have to do it. And I am enjoying it when I write it. I should be happy about that--I am happy about that.

I am not happy about this post, however. I should retitle this post: Madeleine Gets Nothing Done Then Writes This Lame Post.

I will say that the comment on my last post was very inspiring. Thank you. I will do better next time. And I am trying to get Agnes to post again.