Charles Jensen | Writer

There’s nothing quite like a holiday, complete with eleven hours of travel (door to door) to get you feeling rejuvenated and ready for work again. Especially when you start that first day back with a parking ticket and some really disconcerting news at the office.

But I’ve shaved today, a semiannual ritual of sorts, and look twelve years old. I’m wearing a new houndstooth blazer I got on sale. I’m drinking a cup of that strong Writer’s Center coffee. And I’m ready, world, for what’s next.

I spent a good chunk of the break revising the full-length version of the Living Things manuscript. I hadn’t looked at it in ages and was, for a while, thinking about chucking it. (I chuck a lot of work.) I cut some poems, rewrote a few others, and am still tinkering with the title piece, which has been really difficult to nail down.

I think it’s getting there.

I also started rewriting a fiction piece I’ve been working on for a while called Musical Theatre in Hell.

And I read all of the second Gossip Girl novel, You Know You Love Me.

You could say I’m a little obsessed.