2:00 am

is when my writing turns to cheese. 3:00 is when it turns to yogurt.

i am sitting here trying to finish this last essay (i'm on the conclusion), but i already know the whole thing is a write off. the one i finished yesterday was of equal (lack of) quality, but longer.

i don't like being pressed for time when writing. i don't like writing about things that barely interest me. but i still like writing, and in order to improve on it, i have to suck it up and take english courses so that i can learn to think and communicate coherently. it's not about the marks. so i tell myself.

i take it as a sign of improvement that i can recognize my own fecal matter for what it is when i read it because it means i can also recognize when i drop a log of gold.

i am definitely not proud of myself now, but i am definitely not going to waste time and energy beating myself up over it either. i think i relish my own ambivalence.

i have writer's block. i've had it for three weeks. what i've handed in, and what i will hand in are all essentially the same topic but with different citations and sources and for different courses. if anything, i am being economical.

it's not real writer's block, or else i would not have written here. this is literary pacing. my thoughts are being published unfiltered. i think pretty grammatically correctly, no?

in conclusion, i really dislike saying that. i dislike writing conclusions in general because i am not a very conclusive person. there is a giant paper mache piggy bank that sits unwinged, unpainted and unfinished to testify to this. all my previous english teachers noted that my conclusions could stand for improvement, but they've never actually explained how to do so. come to think of it, did i ever learn anything in english other than the jargon of literary criticism? there were no lessons on how to write better, how to overcome blockages, how to conclude essays, how to formulate theses... at least not in high school. all we did was read and talk about it. and then write about it. then wince at the mark.

when writing an assignment, i've always done so with an ulterior motive: entertainment. i try to entertain the teacher reading my paper. i let myself play with the words, with the tropes, with the concepts. not very good at it though. i alliterate like an anglo-saxon. these essays are not entertaining. they are likely to sound highly uneducated and a bit raving. my suffering becomes their suffering. reading bad writing causes a visceral pain.

i've gone and blogged for twenty minutes when i could have finished that last essay.