Escaping the Garret

Problem: Autonomy, Solitude, and the Modernist Scene of Writing

Solution: Be not afraid of the vacuum into which all blog entries go.

Solution: Ignore rankings, evaluations, assessments of merit, and classification systems sponsored by those who claim to know the difference between the 'good' and the 'bad.'

Solution: Give up the dream of the finished work.

Solution: Shoulder the burden of prose, with its tireless rejection of closure.

Solution: Learn to recognize where the "Scene" survives, in what forms, and by what forces, and be prepared to point to it and say "Aha!"

Solution: Embrace all definitions as equally valid but unequally important in their consequences.

Solution: Stop waiting for that ever-deferred moment when the real work will begin.

Solution: Be sure that whatever you are doing now is relevant to an emerging Poetics, or the same: be sure that your emerging Poetics is relevant to whatever you are doing now.

Solution: Stop publishing; start distributing, and variously.

Solution: Snarl when your spouse, partner, loved one, or well-meaning friend advises you to engage in concerted acts of 'self-promotion.'

Solution: Revise only when necessary.

Solution: Get used to the idea that writing is not creative but situational.

Solution: Risk permanent uncertainty and uncertain permanence.

Solution: Read what others have to say about you knowing that there was never an original context out of which they have taken you.

Solution: Cling to solutions, if only temporarily.

Solution: Collaborate even when moved to condemn.