4 February 2012 - First workday in trailer, after a couple of trial afternoons. Started the barn heater running early while I made my breakfast in the house with brotherB. Then, once everyone was fed and settled, I gathered up more Trailer Stuff - notebooks, thesaurus, coffee cup, sardines, etc. - and dragged myself out here. The water in the little cat bowl I put out for Greta yesterday froze solid overnight, but the food and water I stashed in the trailer's nonfunctioning "refrigerator" did not. It was not warm in here, particularly, by then, but the sun through the big window felt wonderful, and a jacket and blanket saw me through until we reached a comfy temperature. Now the heat comes from just sunlight through windowglass.

Here's a quote from Robert D. Richardson's First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process:

We need the power to write, but that is only the beginning. We also need the resilience to rebound from our setbacks, the willingness to finish what we start, and the strength to hold out for performance over intention.

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Here's a new wrinkle. Now that I am outdoors in my own little hut and freed from the need to wear headphones and able to listen again to the fine noises the world makes, some neighbor has acquired a new dog, sounds like a German Shepherd, and left it to bark all the day long. On again go the 'phones.

Damn.

My first note typed into my iPhone from my Bluetooth keyboard while sitting at the table in my writingtrailer. I'll burn some incense, and tomorrow, my first real workday here, I'll smudge and sing. I am thrilled to have this space to myself, this little sanctuary. No more headphones, no more affectionate little pets reclined on the keyboard or pinning down my writing hand. Too wonderful.

The reasons longhand scribbles on paper make the best first-draft medium: first, those simple pages are so much less demanding than the empty windows of a text editor, with its cursor blinking like tapfoot impatience. Second, your handwriting tells a tale all on its own, provides a perfect diagnostic tool for how you really feel about the subject at issue--the leftward lean of fearfulness, forward slope of confidence, squat loops of self-indulgence. Large = excitement, small = anxiety. Et cetera.

Now, the undeviating selfstandardized script of the perfectly integrated mature human being ... I imagine there's profit in watching even that unfurling under your hand.