Birthday Thoughts

I had a professor in graduate school named Lynn Bloom, a very kind woman who had a talent for writing at a prodigious rate, and one piece of advice she would give was to find your most creative time during the day and stick to writing during it.  Over the past several weeks I tried testing that, writing at lunchtime and then trying late at night, but as you can see that hasn’t gone so well.  Looks like my time is in the morning.

I’m 33 today.  Every time I think of my age I think about how I haven’t published anything yet, and I get to feeling anxious and depressed.  Now I’ve only tried to publish once, a scholarly article on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  In hindsight, I sent it to the wrong journal, one focused on 19th century culture and not literary explication, which was the bent of my article.  I should have turned around and tried another journal, but you know how life can be.  I was teaching three writing classes at the time and needed to grade papers.  Excuses, excuses.

But the important thing is that I write consistently and often and build up the muscle.  Maybe when I’m 43 I’ll be publishing consistently.  I had just better be published before I’m 40.