Food & Writing

Food annoys me.
Foods I am currently avoiding in a combined effort to: 1) Lose weight and 2) return my bowels to some kind of normalcy:
wheat/gluten
eggs
all meats and poultry except fish
deep fried foods
refined sugar (although I haven't been very vigilant about that one)
and I'm trying to go easy on the milk products

Which leaves, in the school's cafeteria:
raw vegetables without dressing
cottage cheese
unsweetened tea
sandwich cheese

I had a nice enough salad on Tuesday but I did break down and put some ranch on it. I'm pretty sure ranch has egg in it. In any case I have trouble justifying the $6 cost of a caf lunch if it's for salad and cottage cheese. I did remember to bring some snacks today, but it's nothing substantial, and I'm wanting substantial at the moment. It would help to pack better options. I need tuperware or some equivalent. Sandwich bags. I hate to buy disposable plastic. Maybe my health store has an alternative.

I have my wheat-free, egg-free cookie yet to eat, it's chocolate so it'll probably be good. There are, surprisingly enough, some good ones out there. It might work to at least bring my own dressing, so I can use the caf's salad bar. Nothing wrong with salad. Although again, paying $6 seems steep. I do wish they'd make vegetarian soup, since it's starting to get colder. There are so many vegetarians in Shasta but I guess not so much among the college students, so they don't think to make that option.

What I really hate, and what usually kills my resolve, is thinking about food all of the time. It's so much easier just to only have good options and then pick from within them. I'm trying to get there at home. I had a soy yoghurt for breakfast. Regular yoghurt isn't on my no-no list but I actually like the soy kind so what the hell. What I need is gluten-free bread so I can bring a sandwich to school.

In other news...

It's self-destructive to read about the publishing industry, or the trends in the field of writing today, but somehow I am a moth to that flame. Give me a little spark, a little flicker of renewed enthusiam for writing, and I'm picking up the writing mags and reading the articles one by one. My confidence and energy for writing is so fragile, though, and now I'm turned off of memoirs because I read that they're so trendy that literary fiction is getting pushed aside in favor of them, and I also can't stand the number of ads for "low-residency" MFA programs out there. Churning out writers. Mostly very pretentious writers, most of whom will never get published unless they publish themselves, which brings me to the vanity press's ads that almost rival the MFA ads.

Which in turn brings me to my usual crisis over writing, and whether there's any point to even trying, and not knowing what to write, what genre, should I aim for a general audience or go for the literary elite? Should I stick to poetry or attempt a novel? For teens? in a totally pomo breaking-the-rules style? a mystery?

The thing about memoirs, is it sure nails the "write what you know" thing, plagiarism and falsified memoirs aside. And I'm struggling with that "write what you know" thing. Can I write fiction and write "truth"? Who am I to try to tell a story I never experience? I mean, I like to read fiction. I like to watch fiction. I don't really have a problem with the "truth" thing there--as long as the story is internally consistent, follows its own rules... and yet the art I like is raw and I guess autobiographical. Certainly so is the poetry. Frida Kahlo, Anne Sexton.

Is the answer to write raw poetry and abandon writing fiction until I'm off my unleasing-my-anger-to-fuel-my-writing phase? But what I want to write is a novel. I kind of see poetry as a waste of time. Why? I don't even know why. It seems like it's superfluous somehow, and yet I love the poems I've collected: Sexton, Shange, Angelou, Bushon, etc. They are valuable to me. And I think good fiction is valuable because it entertains and because it can move you, and I certainly think the same thing about these poems. What is my problem with writing poetry? It's too easy? Maybe. Too easy, too short. I can write a poem I'm reasonably happy with (which is the height of my satisfaction with any writing I do) in about an hour. Maybe I'm vain. I don't want ot be known as a poet. There's something fluffy about being a poet. Yes, even Allen Ginsberg, you know, howling away, is somehow more of a lightweight than Steinbeck. And yet I'd rather read Ginsberg.

(And fuck, I just accidentally deleted a whole paragraph. But the point of it was, every writer is unique and so there's something to be said for writing even though it's all been done before, and others have done it "better", because as a writer you may become the one writer that someone really loves.)