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Some of the best work I've ever done
was under some damn fool arbitrary deadline. I want
to make that clear. I have not stretched and gessoed
one canvas, since homework stopped being assigned.

And painting was my first love! Anyone who says
"do it unforced, do it natural" is not doing it,
is my guess. Or if they are, bully for them. Me

I need a bully. Even if it has to be me, if I don't have
some damn fool arbitrary deadline to meet, even if it
is as simple as: "Play 3 songs a day" - which by half way
through the third has me in the mood to write, even if
it is "write 365 poems per year" - which on the face of it,
well, seems a bit excessive.

But if I have to write three hundred and sixty five
poems a year, I write two hundred good poems a year.
Many of which I consider very good. And perhaps twenty

will be

of such a

thing!

I can't conceive they came from me. They came
through me.

They exist because I had to write them. Only because I made
myself have to write them. They were not in me, waiting. They
never would have come out if I had not already gotten the machine
fired up, running hot, spitting out pig iron alternating with gold
ingots and fire.

Okay. So if I don't have to write any poems, then I will
write ten poems in one year.

All doggerel. Free-verse doggerel. Stuff like "my love for you
is like a"
crap, basically.

To those of you who feel work must be produced "freely,"
unforced, without arbitrary deadlines -

Hey! How's your work coming?

Well, I hope.

Coming along well!