Writing Can Be Wacky

WWFT?  What would Freud think?  What did Freud ALWAYS think?

I think this is upside down. 

You never know with  modern art, do you?  The eye of the beholder and all that.  The actual person who painted the art might know which end is up.  Did Jackson Pollock ever flip out in a gallery because one of his paintings was displayed upside down?  How could he tell?  I'll be he cheated a bit and put one little dot right on the bottom of the canvas so he could orient his work properly. 

That's what I would do, if I were a painter.  I would also tell people that they had my work upside down, just to be contrary.  I hear that artists are supposed to be that way, but it's really only the painters and sculptors who get away with that.  Painters and sculptors can fling poop at people, or cut off an ear, and nobody even raises an eyebrow.  It's part of their genius to be whacky and mysterious and unpredictable like that.  They can be eccentric and we love that passion. 

Writers don't get to have all that fun with their audience. Writing is an introverted activity, and involves the painting of a picture in the reader's mind.  I think that is a more difficult task.  A writer can never throw a fit about people reading his book upside down, because that's not how books work.  Maybe a writer might demand that his book be read while hanging upside down, but that's about it.  No one would do that, of course, because it's impossible to read while all the blood rushes to your head.

But writers pour their personalities into their works just as much as a painter does.  It may not be instantly visible as it is in a painting, but by the end of a book, a reader often has strong feelings about what they've just read, and that's a reflection of the passions of the author, as much as it is for a painter.

What do you think? 

Disappearing Handwriting

Mamakat's Wondermous Prompt: 1.) A trend you can't stand.


When I was a kid, way back before electricity, way back before the reading Holy Wars, we had to learn to write cursive.  There we sat at our little desks, our heads bent over the paper specially made for learning to write cursive.  This paper had a dotted line in between the solid ones, and it cost a bit more than the other paper we used.  All of us kids had special pencils that were thick and easy to grip, and the classroom was quiet as we practiced writing a cursive A, followed by a cursive B, and so on.  Our teacher circled the room, making sure that we were writing the letters correctly, and helping us when we did not stay on the line or when our cursive Q ended up too lopsided. Once we mastered the upper and lowercase letters, we began to string the letters together to make words.  The idea was that the pencil did not lift from the page until the word was finished.  I often struggled with that idea; I didn't feel that such things should apply to me, and I am sure that my teacher got tired of my attempts to individualize my education.

A funny thing happened as we learned to write in cursive; those of us who practiced diligently found ourselves doing better on spelling tests.  The practice of writing the words down created a muscle memory that helped us remember the correct spelling, as did seeing the word we had written on the paper.  Once we didn't have to think about the correct spelling, we were able to concentrate on creating actual sentences.  One thing led to another, and by the end of third grade, we were writing fools.  Many of us waited eagerly for our writing assignments, happy to be able to show our teacher what we could do.

I loved the physical act of writing.  I would raid my dad's desk, where he kept a cigar box full of pens.  I would then hide in my room, writing my name, other people's names, and any stories that popped into my head.  I am sure that my mother despaired of ever clearing out all the loose pieces of paper from my room, but we did not have recycling back then. I wrote letters to people, including a girl who didn't even speak English.  The act of pressing the pen to the paper, rolling it along the page to release the ink to form letters, then words, was intoxicating to me, even if it was just a homework assignment.  The fluidity of the movements in writing was somehow a dance, a dance that I could actually participate in, and  I loved that.  Still do.

My son will never have that joy.  He will never learn to write cursive.  He will print words out painstakingly instead of smoothly sliding his pencil along the page.  He will never write saucy comments in his peers' yearbook at the end of the school year.  Should Zane ever become famous, he won't be able to sign autographs with a flourish.  Schools don't teach it anymore.

I hate that.

The reasoning for not teaching cursive seems rational.  When I look askance at the teachers I work with, most of them just shrug stoically and change the subject.  The kids won't use cursive except to sign their names, so why bother?  The big writing tests don't count off for handwriting, so why bother?  Kids will be using computers and typing, so why bother?     I could scream. 

People have to be able to communicate, one way or another.  Writing is just as much a part of communication as other aspects.  If a person can't talk, or use sign, then they should be able to write them down so others can read them. Writing is interconnected with reading, too.  The better you read, the better you write, say the researchers.  Learning to spell words correctly, learning to string words together for form sentences, combining sentences to form paragraphs...all of this starts with learning to write in cursive.  To eliminate handwriting cuts out a vital aspect of writing that limits these children.  I hate it. 

I have no idea what to do about this, except whine and complain.  Maybe if I wrote a letter to the editor?In cursive?  Would he even be able to read it?

The Why Of It

For this weekend's challenge, in honor of all of the writers throwing rationality (and perhaps sanity) to the wind and writing til their fingers bleed, we're asking for exactly 33 words about why we write.



Only when I am
Elbows deep within
The cosmic gore
Of my imagination,
Only when I reach
The beating heart
That is creation,
Do I find a kinship
With the Author of all.

Book Banning

Optional prompt: Banned books week

The first time I ever remember hearing about a book being banned, it was the book, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.  Apparently there was a mention of menstruation in the book?  People didn't think that was appropriate material for kids.  No, that wasn't appropriate, but those horrible films they make the fifth grade classes watch?  Those are sooooo much better. 

Then, there was a furor over the book Forever, another Judy Blume book, because there is a mention of someone having sex.  I was in high school at the time, so of course we ALL wanted to read the book and we did.  While I liked the book, the part that was causing all the uproar was less than titillating, I thought.  I didn't see what the fuss was about. 

Of course, there ar idiots out there who would ban books they disagree with, or books that have objectionable content, or books that were written by women...the list goes on and on.  Sometimes there are books that I would like to burn, like everything ever written by Ann Coulter.  However, I would never do such at thing, because who am I to claim any sort of moral or mental authority?  It is up to each person to use their own judgment as to what they like or don't like, and then to use that judgment to walk away from what they don't care for.  If you don't like it, don't buy it, and don't read it, and certainly, don't talk about it for hours on end on Facebook.

It's that simple.

FIVE MINUTES. STOP.

There ends my 5-minutes Streams of Consciousness post. Want to join in? (We'd love to have you!)

There are just 5 steps...

1. Set your timer and write for 5 minutes.

2. Publish! (No editing. This is rough, unrefined writing.)

3. Grab our SOC button from the sidebar.

4. Sign in with our LinkUP on Sundays.

5. Stop by the other blogs and say hay!

Writing Goals

Write On Edge prompt:  It’s the beginning of autumn, the students are back in the classrooms, and at Write on Edge our thoughts are turning to our dreams and ambitions. This week we want to hear about your writing goals. Take three hundred words and tell us about where you want to take your writing.


I would like to carve out more time to write.  I have way too many things pulling on my attention all the time that I feel stretched beyond comfort, but the only way I am going to get the time is to take it.  Even if it's only five or ten minutes a day to start.  Writing is truly "ME" time--I can be in the moment with the characters and the flow of a story, and it's stress-free.  I may need to be more creative in how I take that time--could I use a digital recorder while I walked on a treadmill?, for instance.

I want to participate in NaNoWriMo.  I suffer from "Yeah, but" syndrome when it comes to my own writing.  As I am typing, my brain is looking over my shoulder and 'backseat' editing.  I need to learn to just throw the mud on the canvas.  Then I can go back and edit to my heart's content.  I'm so busy erasing as I type that I don't get everything out.   

I want to write a short story or a novella and submit it for publication.  When I was in my twenties I sent a poem to Cosmopolitan.  I thought they might consider publishing it; instead, they sent it back with some pretty harsh words written on the top.  It was obvious that my poem was passed around the office for a joke, which crushed my tiny writer's ego.  I stopped showing people my writing, for many, many years.  The first time I posted on Write On Edge, I was terrified that other writers would make fun of me, but I made myself add my name anyway.   And I've never regretted it.  Now it is time to take the next step.

The Writing Process

Mamakat and her World Famous Writing Prompt:  Share your writing process. How long does it take an idea in your head to get published on your blog?



I am an idea person.  I have tons of ideas.  They constantly float around in my head.  I'll see a picture, or a news article, the light bulb goes on.  This will be the most brilliant blog post in the world, I think. I will pour forth my unbelievable insight with my powerful wit and  people will lose their minds adoring my blog post.  I tend to be very enthusiastic about my blog posts at this stage in the process, however lacking in reality that might be.  This self-delusion helps keep me motivated, my fledgling sense self-esteem wrapped in safety.  

Before I can get to a computer or a piece of paper, however,...I often get interrupted.  By life. If my son isn't crawling into my lap to borrow my phone so he can play a game, then my boss is asking me a question about computers, or I am getting a text asking me if I'm watching Grimm.  I can't not pay attention to everything going on around me; I must respond to my child, my boss, that text message.  And the most brilliant blog post idea, whatever it was, vanishes back into the void where all  ideas float, waiting for expression. I end up staring at the ceiling, hoping that the idea will appear again, but that never happens. Never. It's as if that idea was my breath on a cold day. I hate that, because I have this nagging inkling that the idea I can no longer remember is a great one, the best one. 

Interruptions are a part of life, I understand.  The world moves on with or without us, and if you're not paying attention, you've missed it.   I don't want to miss it, but I don't want to miss writing my blog, either.  A survival mechanism was created.  I have learned over the years, particularly after I had my son, that that I have to write everything down.   I have notebooks. I have journals.  I have random pieces of paper.  These items are all over the places where I tend to be, such as in the car, my desk, under the bed...even in the bathroom.   If an idea hits, I write as much as I can immediately, or at least draw a picture to jar my memory.   Sometimes I take those ideas and write a blog post really quickly.  Other times, the ideas will stew for a bit, maybe a week or two.  

Occasionally, I will find a piece of paper that says "florescent orange underpants" or something equally as cryptic.  I file those away in the hopes that at some point I will remember what the heck I was trying to remember. I am an optimist, at least as far as writing goes.

When my son is asleep, I sit in the quiet, parked in front of my computer with my pieces of paper.  I type out my idea.  I look at it.  I look at it some more.  I look at Pinterest and Facebook.  I look at my idea one more time.  Most of the time, that idea has germinated long enough, and sentences start ripening on the vine of my imagination.  Soon I have a relatively good sized crop, ready to harvest.  Snipping, pruning here and there, brutally clipping, until I feel that my work is polished enough.  Then I hit 'Publish'.  Immediately I want to "undo", to pull my work back under my wing.

I don't hit the "revert to draft" button.  I try very hard to let my posts go up, and if I screw up horribly, then I rely on others to tell me that I screwed up horribly.  I decided that it's okay to screw up horribly in blog posts on occasion, which was a big step.   Screwing up horribly on a blog post isn't such a bad thing, if you learn something from that. 

Stream of Consciousness

I am trying something new today.  This stream of consciousness writing thing.  You look at the prompt, you set the timer and write for five minutes.  I am more of a fits and starts writer who tends to proofread and edit while I'm typing, so trying to write in a 'stream' might give me trouble.  But I like to stretch and grow.  The prompt this day is Olympics.

We've been watching the Olympics in the evenings.  Well, I have, anyway.  My husband and son have been taking the time to watch all of the Olympic soccer games that they can, and they are rooting heartily for the USA women's team.  The men's Olympic soccer team didn't make it to the show, so it is up to the women to get the gold this time around.  And so far, they are earning every single inch of ground to get to that medal.  I've only heard about some of the stuff that has been happening, but those women are rough on the field.  They certainly could kick my butt, even if I used my inhaler!  The men's soccer has been worse, with yellow card after yellow card, players pushing the refs and other shenanigans.  I don't like that.  I suppose that the stakes are high at the Olympics, but in soccer the pinnacle is the World Cup, so there shouldn't be all this messing around.   At least the Olympics has kept the hooliganism to a minimum.  Those people annoy the crap out of me, and they disrupt the game.  I don't want my child to think that sort of behavior is okay. 

I know that people were all concerned about Michael Phelps this time around.  There was talk that he had slipped, lost his competitive edge, blah, blah, blah.  I don't think so.  Because I watched that guy swim in a qualifier, and I didn't see a guy who didn't care about winning.  What I saw was a guy sure of himself, who maybe understands that being on a team is not about being selfish, going only for your own glory.  When I watched Phelps swim that qualifier, he was in fourth place until the final 50m, and then, in three strokes, he was the winner.  He's that good. 

Gabby Douglas is a brilliant gymnast, and she deserves the gold medals she has won.  However, I don't believe that anything should be made of the fact that she is African-American.  She is just an American.  She worked hard toward a goal, took advantage of the opportunities given to her, and she was rewarded.  That's the American Dream, right there.

That's five. How did I do?

A "Real" Fan!

I haven't really made an effort to let people that I interact with in RL know that I have a blog.  It is not that I don't want them to know about it.  I try not to write anything that I wouldn't say to anyone's face, and as part of my cold turkey pledge I try not to cuss.  Nothing to really be embarrassed about.

It's that most people I know aren't the least bit interested. I know this to be fact. I told a few people, and they practically fell asleep almost as soon as the word 'blog' was mentioned.  No one in my family has ever read anything I've written, which probably makes family dinners more palatable. Oh, I share posts on Facebook, if I am especially happy with my writing that day. But I don't ever expect anyone who actually sees me every workday to read it.  After all, I am just one little blog.  A minor blip on the interwebs. I understand that, and I am okay with it.  If I could just blog all day as a job, and make money doing it, I might not like it so much.  There's a big difference between writing because you want to and writing because you have to.  While I wouldn't mind making a little spending money with my blog, that's not the reason why I write.

So I was very flattered when someone from work approached me and told me how much she enjoyed reading my blog.  To be honest, when she first approached me, my first thought was 'Am I in trouble?'  But that's pretty much the first thing I think when anyone at work approaches me these days.  I have known this lady for a long time, through several regimes of Superintendents, good and bad(in education, regime is really the correct wording). She is a very nice lady, and I am glad if I can make her laugh every now and then.  

An actual English teacher reads my blog, too, and she hasn't corrected my grammar once.  It's not that my grammar is all that great--half the time when I am writing it is late and I am falling asleep.  My participles are sometimes left dangling as a result, and despite all of my talk of spelling OCD, my posts are often riddled with misspelled words.  I won't even mention gerunds.  Yet she hasn't said a word about any of that, even when I've been expecting to receive a printed copy of my post for the day, the markings from the red pen still fresh.  I am relieved that she does not do this.  

Don't get me wrong.  I adore each and every one of the people who read my blog and comment, even if they are correcting my spelling.  Since the internet is so vast, however, there's a tendency to feel that the readers out there will fade away like a mirage.  For instance, I know that my friend Jillsmo is real because she's sent me presents. Other times, especially when I am tired, I wonder if I just imagined the entire thing.  Maybe I've just imagined writing this entire blog post.  It's been a long day.  

Keen!

When I started blogging, one of my goals was to sharpen up my writing skills. Most of what I had been writing were psycho-educational reports, and if you've ever read one of those reports, they are extremely good sleeping pills. I apologize for those reports. They all have to be written in the same standard format. After 20 years of that, I needed to 'stretch' myself with a challenge, and blogging proved to be a great way to do that. I loved responding to prompts and reading the writing of other people and commenting.

At the beginning of 2011, I made a resolution that I would try to blog every single day. Having various websites out there that offered prompts helped, as did the A to Z Blog Challenge. Sometimes you just need a little push to get your brain going. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post using a prompt from NaBloPoMo.com. NaBloPoMo is short for National Blog Posting Month, and to join, all you have to do is blog every day for a month. That the site provides a theme each month as well as several days of prompts, told me that these people understand how difficult creating a blog post every day can be.

Occasionally, what I write is not very interesting. Occasionally, what I write is rather boring. I am very critical of my own writing, and sometimes I just have to get up and turn off the computer because I get obsessive about editing my work. But occasionally, I think I get it right. I liked what I wrote on that day so much that I submitted it to a contest on NaBloPoMo. I wrote about the perfect reading chair, which is something that I intend to have one day. I thought that it was a good blog post, and I was proud of it.

I won the contest. It freaked me out--at first, I thought that the email telling me that I had won was spam or something! It wasn't so much that I won, I think, as it was that it was recognized. I always wonder about those people who have to choose articles or submissions for magazines, websites, and newspapers. I wonder if they have red pens, and if they circle all the mistakes or underline misspelled words several times or write comments in the margins, like a teacher. I could totally see them do that, even if they kept those comments to themselves. For those people to read what I had written was great enough, but to win their contest was just awesome.

Of course, now I have this really high bar hanging over my head. I will probably bang my head on it a few times, or maybe I will knock it loose and conk myself on the head. But that's okay--it's the journey that counts more than the destination. I remember why I loved writing in the first place, and maybe this contest is the Universe telling me that I am on the right track.

Writing by Prompt

Writing prompts are sometimes used by writers when the well of ideas has run dry. There is nothing wrong with that. Even Stephen King has had days where he sat in front of his typewriter and stared blankly at the sheet of paper.

Writing prompts can be viewed as tiny seeds which contain the germ of an idea within them. From each seed, a different flower will grow. Beautiful.

Some of us also like to stretch ourselves a bit through writing. We want to be the tail on the kite, instead of the string. Writing prompts can help with this. New characters, settings, or even a different language--writers want to stretch our imaginations beyond our narrow view of life. Because that is where the meat of the world is. The big ideas.

I often find myself fiercely staring at a blank computer screen, hoping that my brain waves will generate some sort of miraculous blog post that will cure cancer and julienne potatoes and solve the national debt problem.

On these days, I can barely write my name, never mind a blog post.

The fire that was my imagination has gone out, leaving me in darkness.

On those dark days, writing prompts are a spark to light the fire of the imagination. The very light needed to germinate those seeds

So thank you to those people who provide some writing prompts for the rest of us. I appreciate you!

As soon as I figure out how to do it, I will be linking to those blog posts that I have which were generated by writing prompts, so everything will be in one area. Eventually. I am a slow learner, technology-wise.

Now I've Gone And Done It

I try to read the paper every day. Mostly just the funnies. Some days, however, I have more time to leisurely read while I have my coffee. And so it came to pass that I read a particular article. While I read it, I became incensed.

I never become incensed. Irritated, perhaps, but incensed? Never.

The people in the article were obviously idiots, I immediately thought, and what they were doing was completely stupid. I read further.

It was a crime against humanity of epic proportions.

I finished the article. I was incensed!

I just could not sit idly by and allow this to continue.

Something must be done!

So I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper. Well, given the technology of the day, I sent an email. But still.

I'd like to say that I got this streak of blatant activism from my parents, but that would just not be true. My parents are as apolitical as they come.

They don't belong to any political party.

They don't read up on government and civics in their spare time.

They don't vote.

They didn't even vote for Nashville Star, and they actually watched that show.

They certainly would never write a letter to the editor of a newspaper!

Somewhere in my DNA, however, must be the missing link to my recent spurious activity. Someone in my family, at some point, must have decided to take a stand on a particular issue in this particular fashion.

I can picture some distant relation, scribbling on parchment with a quill, denouncing the fact that the price of butter had gone up.

The good news (for me) is that even if my letter is published, most people that I know don't actually read the part of the paper that has the Letters to the Editor in it.

I think I will just stick to the funnies from now on. It's safer that way.

The A to Z April Blog Challenge!

I started blogging as a way to record my adventures as a parent so I would remember them. I also secretly missed writing and wanted a way to get myself back into the writing groove once more. I have enjoyed participating in the The Red Dress Club as a way to spread my creative wings and have fun, but I thought that perhaps I needed something else. With that in mind, I decided to sign up for the A to Z April Blog Challenge.

The challenge, as far as I can tell, is to write a blog each day in April that begins with every letter of the alphabet. Sundays are 'off', which leaves 26 days to the month for blogging. So the first letter of my blog on April 1st should begin with the letter 'A'. I have no idea what I'll write when the day is 'Q', but I guess I'll figure it out as I go. Wish me luck!

Or is it more appropriate to wish a writer something like 'Good Spelling!' or 'Don't let your participles dangle!'?

ugly

Prompt: Write a short piece, either fiction or non-fiction, about something ugly – and find the beauty in it.




"That has to be the ugliest cactus I have ever seen," my new husband told me as we were moving into our new home.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "It's not that bad."

The cactus was hideous; it was three feet tall, awkward, and narrow, with a couple of stubby outgrowths that couldn't really be called branches. It was covered with so many spines that it looked a mottled gray instead of green. I had tried improving the look by placing the cactus in a brillantly scarlet pot, with no success. It was now ugly in a pretty pot. I had taken to calling the cactus Jezebel.

Jezebel weighed more than I could lift by myself, so I asked my husband to help me move it from the truck to our patio. Larry put his back into the job and was covered in spines before he was able to put the obnoxious plant down. I knew from many firsthand experiences that those spines were painful; they were so fine that they were almost impossible to see and therefore difficult to remove from the skin. Larry complained loudly as he went into the house to change out of the sticker-infected clothing. I resigned myself to spending our first evening in our new house with tweezers instead of a cabernet. I stared at Jezebel sitting on my new patio.

The cactus was ugly, no doubt. I remembered pulling it from a bargain bin at a nursery. I'd nurtured it from a small gangly twig smaller than its spines. I bought it special cactus soil and special cactus food. I talked to it. I did not overwater. I brought it inside when the weather turned freezing. That this particular plant had made it this long was a testament to the will to survive that exists in all things. Still, I had had many opportunities to rid myself of Jezebel over the years.

"Why are you here, Jezebel?" I said aloud. I went back inside the house to finish some more unpacking and take care of my husband.

The morning after an exceptional benevolent spring rainstorm, Jezebel greeted me one morning completely decked out in tiny, bright, purple flowers. I was struck silent by how intensely beautiful it appeared. Within a month, Jezebel was dead. It seemed to me, at that point, that the cactus had only been waiting for the right opportunity to let its true beauty shine forth.

Nerd Love

I am an old school nerd. Not an OG, of course, but I remember back before computers pretty well. Nerds are/were defined by their love of pens(and D&D, but that's for another time). The most obvious of us out there were willing to wear pocket protectors and thus suffered the scorn of the masses. What most people didn't understand is that those brave souls were wearing pocket protectors to protect the PENS, not the shirt.

I love pens. I love looking at them. I love holding them in my hand and twirling them a bit to feel their balance. I love that first time picking up the pen and writing, when you discover the flow of the ink on the paper. When the ink glides smoothly across the page, all is right with the world. I will sit there with my pen and just write or doodle(does anyone else 'doodle' by writing the names of all the Presidents in chronological order, or is that just me?) and listen to the pleasant sound of the pen as it writes. This is how Nerds enter the profound meditative state so aptly labeled 'Nerdvana' by Dogbert from the Dilbert comics.

I don't buy cheap pens where the ink flow is an iffy proposition. I buy the gel ink pens with the rollerball tips. Not a major expense. That would be excessively frivolous in these economic times. Just enough of an expense so that I feel a little decadent using the pen, but no completely hysterical if I lose the pen. I have a small phobia that I'll fall in love with a pen and it will be discontinued, so I will buy that pen in bulk. My purse weighs 50 pounds because of all the pens I've crammed into every possible place. You never know when you might run out of ink and need a new pen!

I go to a lot of meetings in my chosen field, and at the conclusion of these meetings, when all parties have reached consensus, we sign our name to a piece of paper to indicate that agreement. Inevitably, someone at the table will 'borrow' my pen to sign their name. They will admire my pen...and then they will try to walk off with MY pen. This is a serious offense in my book, because my pens are the Precious to me. Every. Last. One. I have followed people out of the meeting room because they've walked off with my pen, and have even chased offenders out to their car to retrieve my pen with the single-minded focus of Gollum.

I know this love of pens seems a bit off to other people. I don't care. Pens are deserving of adoration in my opinion. The pen made it possible for EVERYONE to write whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted, however they wanted(that last part still gives English teachers fits). It was no longer necessary for a person to memorize everything. If you could think it, you could write it down. If someone else said it, you could write it down. Isn't that great? (All my fellow Nerds out there are now glassy-eyed, some drooling, thinking fondly of their pen collections. Now would be a good time to check their pockets for chocolate, if you are so inclined.)

Pens are awesome. You should have some. Really.

Writing

I used to be a fairly decent writer, I think.  I used to love to write about everything.   I had a journal, I loved getting to write compositions for English classes. I especially loved it when the teacher liked what I wrote and even better, when he or she read it to the class.  I can remember my seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Benevides, reading one of my creative writing assignments to the class and laughing while she read it(I wish I had a copy of whatever I wrote, because I don't remember what the assignment was).  That made me happy, to have made someone laugh with something I had created.  I wasn't the most popular person at my school, and in my near future was a big fight with a girl named Carol who WAS the most popular person at my school(I told her that I couldn't fight her because she had halotosis, but she went home and looked the word up.  Oops.), but for that brief moment, all was right with the world. 

I also remember that I took a creative writing class in 9th grade, and made the mistake of getting up to turn in my assignment when the teacher was talking.  I was listening to what she was saying.  Most people CAN walk and listen at the same time, after all. But this teacher blew a gasket and started yelling.  She gave me a failing grade on that assignment, too.  I can remember being so angry looking at that 'F'!  Not my first experience with the whole "life isn't fair" concept, but I didn't do any extra writing after that for a long time. 

In high school I slowly got back on the writing wagon and signed up to be a reporter for the school paper.  I started writing some poetry, a little here and there.  (I stopped keeping a journal sometime in high school, I don't remember when. I just got busy with life, I guess.  I also didn't want my college room mate to see me writing and ask questions. I suppose I was afraid that she would give me an F.)   But in college I experimented with more poetry and other aspects of writing, including some erotica.  I got brave enough one day to send one of my poems about relationships to Cosmopolitan to see if it might get published, since I'd seen other poems in the magazine.  I got my poem back, not with a business-like letter saying 'thanks, but no thanks', but just some obnoxious comment scribbled on the top of the page in pencil.  Something along the lines of "this sucks donkey balls", only more Manhattan-ish.  I didn't really care that they didn't like what I had written, art being subjective and all that, but their form of 'rejection' was pretty crappy. 

I went back to writing just for myself, and hoarding it all like Smaug, never letting anyone else see it. I did submit one poem and it was published in a school district magazine that highlighted the artistic talents of teachers.  Most of the writing I've done over the past twenty years, however, has been work-related, clinical-based, and not very creative.  There's really only so many words you can use to describe an IQ test.  I've tried starting up journals again and again, but I just don't have the time to be consistent about it, and I was feeling guilty if I didn't write every day.  Something had to change.  So I did. I started this blog.

I still like to write, I've discovered.  I'm incredibly nervous about anyone else actually READING it, and a little jealous of people like my friend Jill who is incredibly witty on her blog.  My purpose in writing my blog, besides to use my brain more creatively, is just to write for the fun of it.  No pressure.  If I don't manage to get to a computer for a couple of days, it's okay.  I hope to learn how to add pictures and links and stuff, but it's not a 'have to' sort of thing.  And if nobody but me reads my blog, that's okay too.