Monday, 09 April 2001

Too often I don't write the best scenes. I don't mean that I'm bad at writing scenes in general, I mean I'm all to likely to leave out the most powerful, emotionally-charged scenes.

I think I do this for the same reason that I avoid such scenes in real life--because they're stressful and unpleasant. I have trouble working them up in a way that the stress can be used to create dynamic tension and the unpleasantness can be used to motivate and explicate characters. I know this. And yet, time after time, I find myself doing things like referring back to the tough, confrontational scenes in recollections. My writing suffers for it. But, I'm working on it.

I went for a run this morning, my first good run of the season. I had actually meant to take the day as a rest day. But I felt like running, there was time, the weather was good. So, I went. I ran well over a mile and felt strong the whole time. That's a big improvement over my past few runs.

I bought train tickets to Kalamazoo for the day before Clarion. My Dad will give me a lift from there to East Lansing on Sunday. My mom and my brother want to come visit me while I'm in Michigan and that first weekend seems to work best for my brother's schedule. This will be perfect. We can all go together from Kalamazoo to East Lansing. It will be just like when they took me to college when I was a freshman! And people say you can't go home again.