Here I am on my fifth journal entry, and you don't even know why I'm here. Is it too late for a statement of purpose? Not yet, I don't think, since I only have nearly, uh, nearly one reader. Eileene almost counts, though she's the staff putting it up on the web, and I haven't given the address to my mother yet.
More to the point, is it too early for a statement of purpose? Quite possibly, since I'm still feeling my way around what these pages should be, what they should accomplish, and how much I'm willing to put into them apart from more regular, possibly saleable writing.
That first article about Zanzibar was a killer, as far as time is concerned. I approached it much like any other essay, except to try to turn it out in one day, rather than part of my daily juggle of two or three continuing projects: write one day, redraft a second, and make a close-examined redraft a third day. I spent about four hours on Zanzibar alone, and I can't keep that up. If I did, the journal would become my writing. Eileene was horrified to learn how much time I spent on Zanzibar, too. ?You're just supposed to spend an hour or so on it.? I write slowly at best; I don't know how other journallers manage. In the immediate future, things are even worse, since I'm following a regimen from The Artist's Way, with several assignments every week (say one a day), plus morning pages, which takes an hour or more. See, first thing in the morning, while you're still groggy and the editor inside you isn't up to speed, you fill three notebook pages with longhand writing. The author says it shouldn't take more than twenty or thirty minutes, but, trust me, she is lying. Unless you write in huge letters with a purple crayon, even stream of consciousness takes time, especially if your handwriting is as tiny and crabbed as mine.
Am I off topic? Uh, quick look back?yes, I am. This whole entry is getting slapped down at 5:30, with an hour left before I need to start getting dinner ready, so it won't even get a proper proofreading. Had to do a review of La Citta, plus two regimen assignments, and I'm getting to this late. If you haven't stopped reading already, might as well do so now. This page is really for my benefit, alone.
Ahem.
Statement of Purpose: This web page is regular exercise for any interesting thoughts I have in a day which do not suggest themselves for workable articles. Every day, I will put down something which has crossed my mind and seems a worthy idea or analysis. They may be unrefined, but nonetheless as intelligent and penetrating as I can make them.