is like nil. I write about ten minutes a day right now, because I’m so swamped with work that when I have free time, the last thing i want to do is write. It reminds me of a professor I had in college. He was African, as in from Africa, and a dissident of some sort. He got in trouble because he would write in African languages when only English was legal, so got sent to jail, where he wrote his next novel in that African language I can’t remember on toilet paper. On TOILET PAPER, people. How’s that for a drive to write? Every time I hear about a story of someone who’s life was put in jeopardy because fo their writing, and despite that threat, they keep on writing, it makes me feel…hungry for Nutella. I so don’t have that in me. Though I guess in my way, I keep pushing it forward, because ten minutes is not much, but I do it.
And randomly, even if you are jailed for being an intellectual dissident, it doesn’t necessarily make you a good teacher or interesting to be in the same room with. This dude looked totally defeated and didn’t say anything when we didn’t, so we had prolonged moments of silence. But I guess professor gigs don’t always go to folks who can and want to teach necessarily.