Day 18: I Ain't Writing To Kill a Mockingbird

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Words written: 4,009
Bike rides taken: 2 per day, and it's harder on the way back

I read some of my previous pages this morning, and they weren't terrible. Then I had a hard time writing more pages, because I am running out ideas. I dipped into Amy Hemple's fiction later and realized I will never write like her. Everything she writes is to the quick. I meander. I have to go back to scenes and add detail, especially any scenes that take place in the hospital or in the OR. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I haven't spent much time in hospitals and certainly none in an OR, so it feels fake. I've also added all of these scenes about her wanting to figure out her sister's death and it too appears phony and plotted, like I am trying to create interest or mystery where there isn't any. I did write a few scenes that take place in South Philly that ring true. I suppose I could dump all of this transplant coordinator nonsense and write about what I know---cats, Winton Street, the subway, peering into people's windows to take pictures, working in higher ed, dating poets, obsessing about dogs, moving around constantly. But I am writing about some of that too; she lives in Philadelphia, there are cats, and she has a hard time settling down. Keep with it, that's what they say, and I am trying to do that but some days, the faith runs thinner than others.

This is my favorite sculpture. Note Chap in the background, searching for scat. 

Raluca and me at the Left Hand Coffee Shop after ordering a $17 iced dirty chai. 

Sad for Chaplin, sad for babies. 

Left Hand Coffee Shop and  Expensive Yogurt Factory. The barista still thinks my name is Mustang. 


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