finding time for words

The hardest part about writing is actually doing the writing. My first typewriter was an old Royal that belonged to my great uncle. When I was twelve, I received my first electric typewriter for Christmas. In seventh grade, I scored a D in reading class because I spent the duration of the class writing my first book in two spiral bound notebooks instead of tending to the lesson plans. I spent my late teens and early twenties traveling in a large crowd of friends but often times could be found sitting in a corner with my journals writing down my thoughts or the witty quotes of those around me. When my daughter was born I would write during our long nursing marathons or while she napped. Now, I find myself trying to balance old receipts on the base of the steering wheel while trying to just get down that one good thought that I don't dare forget. Those old scraps become a kind of buffet of good ideas that inadvertantly get lukewarm, cold and eventually taken out to the dumpster. On my desk in the "guest room" is a big stack of unlined paper sitting under my glass paperweight ~ a magikal gift from Ella ~ and when it was placed there, I entertained all kinds of plans to wake up early and spend at least twenty minutes every morning getting those first thoughts down.

Mornings are awfully hectic in my house.

Evenings awfully sleepy.

I've only started calling on the advice of other established writers. Stephen King's book On Writing has been an enormous inspiration. Also, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird ~ Instructions on Writing and Life. The biggest peice of advice they offer is to just do it. To sit down and do the work. To write. To summon up the disicpline and make it happen.

My passion for it is there and I keep thinking that, one of these days, I'll start the work. I'll establish that sense of discipline. Right now, it's still a little like exercise or giving up coffee. I start off strong, stay with it for a wee bit and then it all falls to shit. It's half fear of diving in and half the distraction of life.

I remember back when I lived in the ghetto of my hometown. I shared a tall, brick Sesame Street duplex with six to ten, always changing, room-mates. I painted my bedroom walls a great shade of purple and hung red, flowered curtains and kept my Royal typewriter on the desk by the dirty window. A bottle of orange rind whiskey in the drawer to my left. The words came pouring out in swirls of sticky breath and tobacco smoke, inspired by the ever changing backdrop to my life. The people, the travels, the drugs. Poverty, even if self iduced and three quarters chosen, seemed to offer up a fair amount of muse. But my writing then wasn't born of discipline. It spilled from passion and time and youth. Throw a farm, a child, a mortgage and a partner into the mix and the passion gets muffled, the time gets swallowed and the youth turns into best intentions.

I tell myself that I'll start taking classes on creative writing. That the structure of that environment will back me into the corner of getting words down on paper while also providing the feedback and networking. I tell myself that once I learn more literary tricks, I'll find the time and motivation. Once I learn how to organize my ideas, set up the story, develop characters, write memoirs, learn more forms for poetry............

But I'm here now, sitting, still, with romantic notions of a cluttered desktop, hot mug of tea and a rising sun while the child still sleeps. Sitting with notions of page after page of decade old ideas taking shape, waiting for the dialogue with the aftermath.

Wish me luck.