Null Day and two stories about writers.

As I promised myself, I'm keeping the weekends free for daddy duties. Speaking of which, the 3-yr-old's grandparents have taken him to ride the trains in the mall and I'm here at their place using up their bandwidth while the other little one sleeps.

It'd be a perfect time to try to write, but I'm saving it up for Tuesday. There'll be no writing on Monday since it's a holiday. Danial Alarcon told me a story about some famous writer who rented the apartment below him in his apartment building. Every day, the writer would dress up in a suit and tie, ride the elevator down one flight, and enter this unadored apartment building to write. First of all, wouldn't it be nice to be able to afford a second apartment just for writing? Secondly, I love the idea of preserving the integrity of a work schedule even when no such schedule exists for a writer. I'm going to try to do something similar while on this break from teaching.

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At the Kundiman Retreat, Kimiko Hahn told us a story about giving ourselves permission to write. Marie Ponsot was giving a lecture at a university. One student asked Marie about writers block and how hard it was for this particular student to write because she was so busy. Marie (who raised 7 children by herself while teaching a strenuous teaching load) responded "Surely you have 10 minutes?"

Ouch. I have ten minutes. I have ten minutes almost every day. What's MY problem?

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Another Kundiman picture for you:

Faculty member, Jon Pineda, crooning some of his own tunes to the fellows.

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