Make Time for Your Writer Friends

Today I met one of my favorite people downtown and we looked at books at Atticus and roamed around the Yale Art Gallery together. I met Michael in grad school and back then, Atlas called him Poet Michael because we knew a few other Michaels. In my head, I still call him Poet Michael.

As we walked around the African Art room, I found myself talking about the second book situation. I have been keeping the work to myself the way I need to in order to make it. I told Michael that I feel obsessed with it, which is a good sign. I feel the novel knitting together. Writing is not a product, it’s an event, an epiphany, a trip into myself. I am at the place in the novel where it whispers to me constantly, where it tells me where it should go. Where it starts to shift what it’s about. I thought I knew what it was about but now it’s starting to root a little deeper, reaching lower for the things I couldn’t say out loud at first. This is part of what I love about writing. This aliveness, this weird secret to keep as a book forms. There is no other way I’d rather live.

And part of living this way is the community we get to make with other writers. I hadn’t seen Michael in a couple of years, I think, and I am so glad we got this time today. We talked about the writers we see on zoom, the writer friends we have in common, the writing itself. It was an afternoon well spent.

It’s been about two months since my last wall update so I thought I’d end this post with some photos of the last few weeks of drawings. I am still at it. Tired, sick to death of the news and all that is happening in our country, but I keep drawing.

Thank you for reading.