The Coarse Grind: Part 20: A Writer Writes

Is it just me or did we miss a Coarse Grind?
—Editor Phil

Well. The schedule got blown. I can’t explain it and neither can Editor Phil. It was 4 p.m. Wednesday before either of us realized: the first Sunday of the Month was last Sunday, motherfucker—not tomorrow, when, after taking off work today (Saturday), I’d have 6-1,200 in the draft box and he’d be ready to offer you your monthly cup of The Coarse Grind. Phil says that after close to 2 years of me writing this column it was bound to happen. My punkrock ethos finds it abhorrent though, and only slightly less unforgivable than just blowing the deadline off. Blowing off the deadline would mean I’m not into it, the work, and if I’m not into it then I should quit ain’t it though. Deadline should trump all. I can’t make sense of it to be honest and certainly couldn’t reason or reckon with it en route to the Driskill Hotel for night 2 of 3 Happy Hours when I got Phil’s message. The book files for my and Will Stenberg’s next collections were submitted to Minuteman Press at 4:30 a.m. 2 days before, I captained a 6-hour corporate, dropped rentals in Manchaca TX, drafted the Poem of the Week and sent it to 800 people by 11 that night, worked 5 hours at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless the next day, played the Driskill Hotel bar, wrote and posted 963 words to Going for the Throat and did another 3-hour shift at the ARCH the next day before I heard from Phil and realized we were 4 days behind. What I’m trying to say is I thought the first Sunday of the month was tomorrow and I might’ve paid closer attention to the calendar had I not been in the maelstrom, for months now, since I decided to learn another instrument, send out an original poem every week, launch a Patreon and publish a poet in addition to myself at Yellow Lark Press by December 1.

How’s that? You have to understand it’s been do or die for so long I can’t tell the weekend from the long nights, Monday-Friday is a joke and anyway a reality very far off when I only sleep in marathons—every couple of weeks over a long dead luxuriating weekend in my recliner by the glass window with the curtains drawn, dreaming of you and waking only to piss and eat. Missing a deadline would have been the same as death to me, all those lean, factory years and slinging coffee on the boheme circuit. Art trumped all for so long and that’s because if I didn’t come through with my own work I’d have to reckon that what I did for money was me. I’d only be a bartender if I didn’t self-publish and I’d only be a college dropout if I didn’t play in a band and do poetry readings. These were fine if dark motivations. I couldn’t become a company man. I wouldn’t get taken, subsumed and assimilated by the machine. That’s how important deadlines were, Good Reader, and still are, though forgetting one instead of blowing it off is a head-scratcher, and had I not been so balls-deep busy and breathless with the real work I might’ve thought myself a failure or a poseur—someone who only thinks he’s a writer. The truth is a writer writes and these squirrely confessions to you, and my reasoning, pleading and hashing it out here is, actually, writing. Coming through is like wearing through when what’s in the way becomes the way and I’ve made diamonds from dogshit ain’t I, if I’m at the writing desk and banging keys, 625 words and 2 cups of coarsely ground dark roast in.

Is forgetting a deadline better than missing one? I’d venture it is, if only to save my ass. It’s quiet here at the writing desk. The twat next door has gone to work and the roofers in the back are hopefully done for the day. I’ll put another pot on and finally get around to sending some letters out. Will Stenberg and I will be the proud owners of 225 copies of our own letter pressed and perfectly bound copies of poetry by December 1, as well as 100 screen-printed broadsides. I’ll be hitting the road to sell them to you, and to speak and read and make you know. We’ll be filming the readings and audio will be available for download, to Patrons first, and then to the People. You have to know I’m in this. I took the advice of my PR guru years ago, in the dead of winter at a West Philly bar she told me to concern myself only with what I’m most passionate about and the rest would die and fade away. Now she runs things for me while I post up here at the desk, raging out a heart song and banging on the keys, watching the world slither and crumble out the wide, green window. My worries have fell away, I’ll get this off to the Editor, send my work out into the wild and listen for an echo. Keep bleeding. Always write.

See you on the streets motherfucker.

SIGN UP AND SHARE THE POEM OF THE WEEK AND JIM TRAINER WILL WRITE YOU A POEM!

SEND JIM YOUR ADDRESS AND HE’LL WRITE YOU A LETTER!

FOR AS LITTLE AS $5 A MONTH GET FIRST ACCESS TO JIM’S PROCESS AND WORK.

NO COMEBACKS BY WILL STENBERG WILL BE RELEASED THIS DECEMBER THROUGH YELLOW LARK PRESS.  JIM TRAINER WILL RELEASE 2031, HIS SIXTH FULL-LENGTH COLLECTION OF POETRY, THIS DECEMBER THROUGH YELLOW LARK PRESS. 

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPIES HERE.  

Stay tuned for news on these releases, readings and broadsides from each collection, designed by Snakes Will Eat You and letter pressed at the Austin Book Arts Center.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Playing in 30, until 7:15 at the mighty @thedriskill with Julian Root! Come on. #singersongwriter #acousticguitar #banjo #jimtrainer

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Nov 5, 2019 at 3:29pm PST

• Author Details

Jim Trainer Author

Jim Trainer’s The Coarse Grind, a column on the creative life, has been published monthly at Into the Void. Jim was curator of Going For The Throat—a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance—and publishes one collection of poetry, and sometimes prose, per year through Yellow Lark Press. “KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM” is his 7th.

web

https://www.jimtrainer.net/

follow me