Yesterday was mostly this-n-that desk work, and today will be more of the same: an editing project to finalize, a few arts commission obligations to sort through, the Haverford magazine article to fact-check, more scheduling to figure out.  I finished rereading the Strout novel and have moved on to Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, which is completely new to me. I wandered through my gardens. I folded clean sheets.

I'm still tinkering with the sonnets and even as I work I can feel my brain returning to its unpossessed state . . . which is good because late-stage revision is basically impossible when I'm in the throes. I can make big, sweeping, re-see-everything changes, but the niggly details require a steadier state of mind.

So these routine editing projects, the publicity stuff I'm whipping up for the arts commission, the fact-checking: all of this daily-grind stuff does have a link to the crazy-making side of my writing life. It gives me a structural bridge. It gives me a box of tools. I can walk away from the generative chaos, turn back to look at what I've made, begin to see it more dispassionately, then reach for a plane and some sandpaper and start honing.