The days grow shorter. The old sadness returns, speaking a language I still don’t understand. Autumn, I say, grateful to have a word for it.
The inner poet clears his throat. The inner poet insists that he can’t begin working until the trash is emptied and the house is tidy and the planets are aligned. But there’s no right time to start writing again. I can’t wait until I’m enlightened. I can’t wait until George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein sit down and work the damn thing out. As Gail Sher says in One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers, “If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.”
