I surround myself with objects that carry with them a personal history - old books, bowls, boxes, splintering chairs and benches from imperial China. I imagine the people who once turning the pages or rubbed their palms on the surfaces while they were thinking - thinking what? And then I hear my pappy little dog. Bubba Zo is my distraction, my reminder to get up and go for a walk before he pees on the carpet. I now include a lot of dog metaphors in my writing.

A girl pushing a carpet sweeper under my type-writer table has never annoyed me particularly, nor has it taken my mind off my work, unless the girl was unusually pretty or unusually clumsy. My wife, thank God, has never been protective of me, as, I am told, the wives of some writers are. In consequence, the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man - they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go.

I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark - it must be dark - and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come... For me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular... Writers all devise ways to approach their place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being the light, it's being there before it arrives.

Whether you're at your desk or not when a poem's under way, isn't three that constant eddy in your mind? If it's strong enough all sorts of random flotsam gets drawn into it, how selectively it's hopeless to decide at the time. I try to break off, get away from the page, into the kitchen for a spell of mixing and marinating which gives the words a chance to sort themselves out behind my back. But three's really no escape, except perhaps the third drink.

Getting started is partly stalling... But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time i forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things.

Writing requires huge amounts of solitude. What I've done to soften the harshness of that choice is that I don't write all the time. I like to go out... I like to talk. I like to listen. I like to look and to watch. Maybe I have an Attention Surplus Disorder. The easiest thing in the world for me is to pay attention.

I work on what's important to me in the morning, for three hours. Usually, in the afternoon, I have what I call my "toy truck," a story that might develop or might not, but meanwhile it's fun to work on. I begin to pile up some pages, and eventually it'll get shifted over to the morning...

Working on a new idea is kind of like getting married. Then a new idea comes along and you think, "Man, I'd really like to go out with her. "But you can't. At least not until the old idea is finished. I don't take notes, I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamned thing.

I work on what's important to me in the morning, for three hours. Usually, in the afternoon, I have what I call my "toy truck," a story that might develop or might not, but meanwhile it's fun to work on. I begin to pile up some pages, and eventually it'll get shifted over to the morning...

Working on a new idea is kind of like getting married. Then a new idea comes along and you think, "Man, I'd really like to go out with her. "But you can't. At least not until the old idea is finished. I don't take notes, I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamned thing.

Separated from night
You spoke and then there was light
They point to You

Divided water from land
Bowing to Your command
They point to You

The sun that’s blazing at noon
And every phase of the moon
They point to You.

A baby’s cry and the way
A sunset closes the day
They point to You.

*For You’re the only One worth praising
More radiant than earth and sky
And everyday that I survey Your creation
I see why I see why

**God of everything I see,
Come create again in me
You were yesterday
and You will always be
So take each breath that I breathe
And be the life that I bleed
Create again in me

The storm that’s raging at sea
The little child on her knees
They point to You

Your grace that’s poured out on me
The sacrifice on a tree
They point to You

Your Word vaults across the sky
From sunrise to sunset
Melting the ice, scorching the desert
Warm our hearts to faith...

create again in me...

Create Again
Aaron Shust