Classes
For almost a month now I’ve been taking Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art. Next month I hope to start a fiction writing course. In September, I start German at the Goethe Institute. And if my corner of the universe remains benevolent, I will start college courses in the Spring.
I miss the structure of school, the required self-improvement, the promise of punishment if I don’t write or read. I thought then that I was bored, but I didn’t know what bored was. My mind now feels like so many packed noodles (drain, but don’t rinse!), and it is only recently that I am finally struggling back to a semblance of intelligence. I pen a story, I finish a book, and I feel a little bit more like myself. I learn new words, most of them unusable, and it gets better.
Somehow I turned off my desires for a while and became complacent. It was easy, since I was too poor and worried. But now, they have come crashing back in force, and I am embarrassed in their presence to have so little to show.
“But look at this story! It’s 17 pages and has some great characterization!”
“It’s also filled with holes and the heroine is barely an abstraction.”
“Yes… well…”
Within four years I intend to leave Atlanta for a city where book publishers frolic, like New York or Chicago. Preferably New York. This means that I must finish a degree, get a firm grasp of editing and the various style manuals, and ideally bring at least some of my efforts to a publishable status. And knowing a foreign language (like German!) wouldn’t hurt either…