I am about to have a cavity drilled. I am behind in my deadlines. I am settled, pretty much, in my new job. I am on the verge of writing something real. I am reading two magazines and four books, which has meant just carrying one of each around with me since I don’t have time really to read any except on the subway. I am enjoying the subway, though maybe I shouldn’t admit that. I am expanding—physically, mentally, as is the shelf where I keep my papers of things that need attention, things I need to take of, things I really want to do, each day more than the last. I am exploring my options. I am peeking at new cities. I am considering leaving a city altogether and what that might be like. (I don’t know if I could hack it.) I am wondering what I should do with myself, just like I was all summer, it’s almost fall now and I am wondering still.

I have always loved the fall. It’s when school starts (I wish I were still in school; I love school); it’s when the weather cools (or is supposed to); it’s when I met E.

The cavity is one from my childhood. It’s falling out and must be replaced. I always thought cavities were forever, but nothing is forever, and I should have learned that by now. Fall brings change. It brings new fillings, new challenges, a new outlook on life?

Ideas are cascading over me, but we all know that’s not enough. The ideas must meet paper. This fall they will, I hope.

A conversation last night with the other half. He sees something in me, and I see something in him: what we’re each capable of, that potential. Could we trade that faith, one for the other? Imagine the confidence, if I had his, and he had mine.

I keep getting these ideas when I’m traveling. I don’t have to be traveling far. They come when I’m walking the sidewalk. While crossing the street. On the subway. In an elevator. Climbing flights of stairs. Last week, they were flooding through me while I traveled in a crowded train on tracks running north alongside the Hudson River.

The ideas are moving, you see. If I don’t go running to catch them, they’ll leave me behind. They sure do not want to wait until the end of September, when I’ll be free of deadlines and ready to pay them attention. They’re trying to get me to chase them. The thing is, I don’t want them to stop. Each time I get closer and closer into the novel. The next one could push me over the edge and I want to be pushed, I want over this edge. How can I keep them coming? Clearly we should book that trip to Vancouver.

It is apparently impossible for me to escape. I write long. Always, every time, I write too long. For example, I told you I write long twice, when all I had to do was say it once. Why? Why, I can’t help it. I wish I could be pitch-perfect and precise, but I’m a rambler.

My writing method is:

• Describe a thing somewhat eloquently.

• Describe a thing perhaps more eloquently.

• Describe a thing exactly eloquently enough.

• Add one more description just for the hell of it.

• Look back and panic at the sprawling paragraph.

• Decide to deal with it tomorrow.

• Move on to the next thing.

In this way, I write at least two pages for every one.

Once I’ve written to the end of the story, I go back and hack violently at the sentences. I cut and cut and cut and cut and then I write some more in the middle and then I cut some more and then I add seven more sentences I shouldn’t have added so I go back and cut three and then I try to cut more, I do, but I can’t, there’s a point at which it becomes painful, and so I leave it alone, until the next day when I go back in and start hacking again.

I guess it can feel sort of exhilarating.

Even when I try to keep myself to a very set page count—when I am not ALLOWED to turn in more than 20,000 words, for example—it is likely that I will write 40,000. I will then need days to get it down to a passable length for fear of horrifying the editors and jamming up their printers.

I have made it through a weekend of cuts and am now on to the next thing. I realize that I could have finished the project a full week ago if I’d just written shorter, but can I stop myself, can I? No, I cannot.

I could go on and on about this, but I will stop this post right now. Right before it’s—

(finished.)