Day 8



Thursday morning, I have a mental block. Nothing to write about. I’m sitting on a comfortable chair and the table is just right despite the clutter but the mind has nothing to bite. I had better write about nothing or spend the rest of the day reading.

It’s 2 p.m. and I haven’t read anything. I might as well think about the past. Looking back, I was a very shy boy. Still I am. Four months from now I am 50. It took me that long to come up with the idea that as long as you are shy, stupid moronic people like my classmates in high school and in college will take advantage of you. They will shit on you at every opportunity. The best opportunity is when they see you as shy. To them shyness is a form of weakness. They will never understand shyness or gentility—I understand because people in general are morons.



Day 9



After about a week, the computer is finally fixed. This morning I opened my e-mail but there was nothing new—all unsolicited ad e-mails. I didn’t even read one of them. All junk, self-serving junk.



Day 10



It’s Saturday morning, about 6 o’clock. It’s hard to be free when you know you’re writing for publication, unless (perhaps) you’re a bit drunk or desperate. I want to be disinhibited when writing but there is always that internal editor that cuts me whenever I feel like a wild animal. That’s one of the terrors of writing. I have to avoid it by writing, of course—no other way.

