I decided to live the dream and become a starving artist this summer. Yes, that's right. I will crimp my back hunched over the keyboard late into the night, feeling the growl from my stomach and ignoring it for ART. My friend Sara King, who has shot a bear and might soon shoot her ex-husband for trying to claim intellectual property rights on ANYTHING SHE WRITES AGAIN EVER, is also living the dream and we've been swapping stories back and forth.

Unfortunately, I only semi-qualify as a starving artist since I have a nearly-full-time job. Also, I have a wife and child who support me and understand my longing to make it as a writer, which ruins the qualification that "no one understands me." Also, I can't grow a beard. Like a good starving artist, I blame society.

Also, I don't really starve, because I spend too much of my rare money on ice cream.

But other than that...

Last week started as a good week for starving artistry. I woke up with angst, ready to cast myself from society. After reading four or five short stories in one day, a short story just fell out of me between Sunday and Monday. Six thousand words, on the page like poop in a bucket. It was a beautiful thing. Not the poop. The story. Chrissy thinks it's one of my best.

I started work on a novel that I did 7000 words on for a class a while ago and then left for later. I wrote seven thousand more words and then... pbbt. It sucked. I printed it all, deleted everything for the computer and am now retyping carefully to filter it. As you can imagine, this causes annoyance. I don't like writing the same thing over again, even if the story improves.

And when I have trouble with the novel, the Frenchman comes. He comes into my head and says things like this:

"Ze novel does not go well. Ze noveleest walks across ze street to heez favor-eet cafe. He sees patterrns on ze walls in ze bricks. Zey look like cheeldren laughing at heem, mocking ze arteesteec ambeetions. A single tear falls eento heez coffee."