It's time...

It's time to start writing again--my own stuff, that is. I have the usual symptoms...my head has gotten stuffy with non-sequiturs and thoughts that go off roaming like a pack of loose dogs. And yet, and yet, I don't dive right in and finish those short stories, edit an article that's already been accepted, or beaver on my novel. I have my reasons--all of them good, as rationalizations always are. The reasons don't matter, of course. They just keep me off-balance.

What always forces me back to the page is that nothing except writing makes me feel fully alive. So, as happens when I'm ready to do something, I take baby-steps and choose something from my long guilty list and do it. Setting up this blog has been on my list since January, so today I can x through another item.

I had a blog a few years ago--back when Blogger wasn't terribly friendly although that never put me off posting. What caused me to let that blog wither, turn black, and drop off the vine was that I took it so seriously. Nothing was ever quite good enough to post. My blog started to remind me of that bubble-gum pink diary I got for Christmas, when I turned eleven.

Probably every girl in America had that identical diary. Of course, it had puffy covers, was labeled Diary in curly gold script, and boasted a tiny laughable lock and key. When I began writing, those daily pages loomed before me like a fat impossible chore. (Did I already sense that my mother and father would be sneaking into my room to read it?) Soon enough, I was hopelessly behind and started every page with a note of apology to my own diary, whenever I dragged myself to its demanding pinkness.

Of course, when I abandoned that first blog, thinking of that first oppressive diary, I'd forgotten that eventually I finished it, then went on to write many more diaries, numbering in the several hundreds. Recalling that, this particular log doesn't seem so daunting. I know my prose doesn't need to be so deathless. I'm content to let it take its own shape.