I finished my Bronte essay, and now, once again, I have nothing to write. This state of affairs will be fine for a day or two, and then I will start to fret and pace and badger myself to write something, anything, two words, a comma.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a poet friend about the urge to write--how it's not always, not even usually, an urge to say something about a particular subject but a need to mess around with language and see what happens. I find that this is true for me whether I end up writing a poem or an essay: I don't really have to know what I want to write about, but I have a desperate desire to shuffle words and punctuation together on a page. And editing other people's writing doesn't count. Those three adjectives and a semicolon have to belong to me.

Believe or not, I have just started to read a book I have never read before--Orhan Pamuk's Snow. Thus far the novel is very snowy. I am wondering if it will snow all the way through to the end. If this were Dickens, he would have the sun come out at a crucial "the scales fall from the hero's eyes" moment, but who knows what sneaky weather-symbolism techniques these modern novelists will spring on me?

Dinner tonight: smelts.