Long Time No See

Hey, Everybody. I'm not dead or even dying slowly due to a painful condition that makes me allergic to keyboards or cyberspace.

Nope. I'm writing like crazy, keeping pace to finish 50,000 words of the novel by Nov. 30. Hard to believe, but true.

Stopped posting the stories because I began to feel the pressure of making them readable beyond what allowed me to take risks and delve into my imagination, tossing out crap to find the stuff worth keeping. I've found that if I write enough crap, there'll be some surprising treasures buried within in. Trouble was, my ego has trouble letting me post crap (as least what I recognize as crap), so I found myself writing too close to my vest, with too little risk.

You guys are great--have been great. This is no problem but my own, and deciding not to post the snippets let me give myself permission to wildly overwrite, leave cliches in to be mined later, and so on. Most of all, it turned me loose to take risks.

I've been rereading Anne LaMott's Bird by Bird as I do every few months. Here's a graph that gets me every time.

You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a tood time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.

In this crazy NaNoWriMo thing I've undertaken, I've discovered surprising things about myself and found myself in my own heart. All of you who read and comment and support me have midwifed these things into being, and I thank you. So Much.

I'll probably post a few passages from time to time, and I'll try to find time to post normal stuff, too. My connection to all of you is SO important to me. I've missed you.

Much more soon.
j