We hold just a little tight

          I've been noticing lately how genuinely my mood is affected by music. I go one-eighties depending on the song that's playing. I'm really susceptible to moods, I guess.
          My friend Andy recently introduced me to a song by the Decemberists. It's called After the Bombs, and it was released with The Crane Wife, but only on the iTunes version. It's beautiful. It makes me think of cold nights and rainy windshields and breath fogging on the air and orange streetlights, it makes me want to be in love and then heartbroken and still in love.



          I'm reading this book, Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link.
          It's really fucking weird.
          But I like it. A lot. I've been reading a lot of short stories, a lot of contemporary authors, a lot of anthologies of short fiction for my thesis. There's this trend for hyper realism and hyper realistic unlikelihood. There's this stale kind of trendiness in most of the stuff I've read; a good example of this is Miranda July's book No One Belongs Here More Than You. It's a great book, sure, talented writing, mostly unique - but it's got that sense of being trendy. Of being edgy and commercially honest. You know, there's that coffee shop sort of feel to it. When you read it, you can tell that July's a performance artist. You can tell she's part of that kind of crowd.
          But Kelly Link is nuts. I sat down and read three stories, started at dinner, read about a family whose house is becoming haunted while rabbits infest their yard and the daughter who sleepwalks and the cat who is haunted and the husband's boss who cries crocodile tears and the wife who is pregnant and wears a gas mask while painting, while I ate my stir fry.
          I migrated to an academic building, found a squashy chair, kicked off my shoes, and read a story about a witch who built herself some children, about cats, about revenge, about ants who carry time, about skins, about fat, about killing and loving and lying and vicious care.
          There's a story about pajamas and zombies who never buy anything at the twenty-four hour convenience store but try to give the clerk rocks and leaves.
          There's a story about a man who marries a dead woman, and suspects her of cheating on him.
          This book is crazy.
          But it's more honest than anything else I've read yet.

          I'm having trouble writing. I've got all these ideas and scraps - images, titles, overheard conversations - that I want to use, but I can't seem to do anything with them. I guess this is where the whole "work" aspect comes in - just doing it even when it isn't easy.
          But something that's motivating me is that I want to come away from this with a manuscript, not just a thesis. I want to be able to hand this to someone and say, Here, please publish it. Because when I think about it, what I really want to do with my life isn't to work for a magazine, or to work at a publishing house. I just want to write.
          I guess here's where I should practice, then. When my livelihood doesn't depend on getting that draft done by tomorrow.