Look It Up

I recently started researching for my Xenith column.  I mean, when the idea for the column was first offered to me, I started doing some research, but it wasn’t much.  I went to the library, checked out a few books, read a few essays and poems and forgot about the books until they were two months overdue. 

Now I’m really researching, looking through every poetry anthology and literary magazine I own.  I dug up my parent’s copies of the Harvard Classics, which have now enthralled me.  I’m constantly looking for articles on the internet, I’m returning to the library soon, this time to actually use more than a smidgen of the thoughts contained in the pages I borrow.

I’m constantly writing down thoughts on the Springpad app on my phone, I have sticky notes stuck to the border of my monitor.  All of this research cause a resurgence interest in writing, for both new ideas and the improvement of old. 

I’m thinking of publication again, and now I actually want to take my time on things.  I want to fill in the background and feel out the idea before I move beyond the initial Aha! moment.  Yes, often when inspiration strikes you go beyond the idea and begin construction.  I did that when I recently started writing a novel.  Now I’m using the initial passionate pages along with long thought out notes to construct a detailed outline, so as to guide the fervor that is bubbling up.

All of this work has left non-research books gathering dust.  So I’m still finding a grip on this newly rekindled flame, and I need achieve balance lest the fire go out or burn me.  I’m sure being sick and stuck in the house with nothing else to do hasn’t helped, and as I get better and am able to get out and do things, that balance should be easier to attain.

Also, I quit smoking.  So fuck you RJReynolds, I’m reclaiming my lungs.  And about fifteen hundred bucks or more a year.

I look forward to my coming literary adventures.