. I am beginning to
feel like I am emerging from a long hibernation. My perspective and outlook
both of myself and the world I live in are suddenly changing, refining and
becoming better defined after a long time away from this part of my life and
who I am. It is very much like waking up
a part of you that has been in a deep sleep for a long time. As I stood in the shower this morning think
about my book it suddenly occurred to me that I was about to begin a very big
project and I have no idea where and how I will find the time or energy to do
this plus work full time.
I
wonder if I have opened Pandora’s Box twenty-one months too soon. How can I possibly do this and work plus find
the time in my life to do the things that keep me sane, mainly reading, and
knitting and photography. Or even, find
the time to eat and sleep and write the things I need to get into “writing
fitness” for want of a better description.
Okay, forget the knitting, and photography and even the pleasure
reading. Just to find the hours in the
day to get back into the state of mind that I remember how to write decent seems an impossible task.
It has been nearly fifteen years since I sat
in a writing seminar for a semester and wrote daily to feed the monster that
sat in the classroom three times a week for four hours and chewed up, swallowed
and digested the writing by members who somehow found the courage to put their
work before the group. The critiquing came
fast and furious and spared no one. The
attitude was, if you didn’t want to be told what was wrong or right with your
stuff why did you waste your money and time (and most importantly OUR time by
even showing up?) This class was definitely not for the faint at heart and several
seemed to find out very early in the semester that this was not the skate class
they thought it would be and they disappeared into the student union never to
be seen again. I was the oldest in the
class and they watched me for a few weeks to see it I would be the old one they
could feed on when fresh food got scarce.
As it turned out I managed to hold my own—sometimes just barely!
To get
back to the point of your blog—critiquing for the fun and profit of the
writer. It sounds heavenly. Although you may have to someday haul out
this email and force me to admit that I wrote it and I certainly was neither
drunk or delusional at the time! I feel
like I am behind the rest right now because I am only just going back to the
abandoned child (figuratively speaking) I left in a dark closet to either
starve to death of get eaten by the field mice that periodically scavenged
through our garage looking for something tasty only to find box after box of half-forgotten
papers written when days seemed to have more hours in them and I didn’t have
the demands of a full-time job. I guess I am not even behind the rest at the
moment because I have yet to actually even been accepted into your stable of
writers yet. That is something I am
willing to work hard at to prove myself worthy of.
Now that
I have wandered off and not even said what I came here to say but still managed
to waste several minutes of your time, I will get to the point and say what I
mean. Thank you for your blogs. I have either been reminded anew of what I
have already learned or I am actually grasping and understanding your advice
and information. Your blog today was
excellent, so much so that I printed it out and intend to read it for several
days running until I have eaten all the meat off the bones and then I will chew
on the bones while I think about and digest the meat—hopefully as much in my
gut as in my head. Forgive my run-on
stream of consciousness (or sarcasm’s).
I also am very grateful for your return email yesterday and your
encouragement. I am now going to try to
attempt to quit complaining and finding excuses not to write and just apply
myself to my keyboard and get it done.
By the way, since I have made a commitment to blog everyday myself and
it is now 10:00 PM and I must soon head to bed so as to start this all over
again at 0500 tomorrow morning this will
be my blog for the day. So sometimes we have to do two or three things at once just to stay in the running! Please forgive my run on sentences, sentence
fragments and far too many exclamation points.
I promise to try to keep them out of my “real” writing. They are all little fairies that flutter
about my casual writing and refuse to leave me alone until I allow them to take
their place on the pages I am writing at the time. I usually ban them when I get down to the “real
thing”.
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