A Writer's Woe

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

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It has been a week since I've written, and already my mind itches to return.
But, like a tourist returning to a favorite beach without their luggage, I return with no idea what to write.
I am just here. What comes will be spontaneous, unorganized and unrehearsed. I just have to scratch.
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Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. -William Wordsworth
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I started this new blog to concentrate on ten areas of my life that needed improvement. What I have discovered on my time away, is that it was not so much the act of improvement that I sought, but the ability to write about it.
I haven't found a better family, marriage, body, spirit, home..or whatever...I have just found a way to write about it. To peel it open, to inspect it, to chart it inside my memory banks for safe keeping. I have made it visible, with form- approachable and diagrammed so I could sit back and say, "This is my life. This is where I am and who I am."
Yet, the very act of writing about it helps to reveal the weaknesses and the strengths of my Ten. I've been surprised, embarrassed, confident and ashamed at the things I have found in myself.
I've scratched so hard, the truth came through.
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One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane
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Being away has been liberating. A breath of fresh air. A vacation, a gift, a reward I gave myself.
My mind was so cluttered. My brain ached to write something every single day. I suffered. Putting words on paper should come easily, yet every day it was becoming more difficult. Forced. insincere and uncomfortable.
I was afraid of letting my readers down- not only if I didn't write, but if I didn't improve my life as significantly as I had promised.
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As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. ~Virginia Woolf
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I will never find perfection. I will never be complete. My Ten will never be infallible.
But writing about it holds me accountable for it all. It's a mental note to myself. A reminder of the important things in life. My cue to smile, hug, pray and act. My reason to get up every morning and start the day.
To scratch the itch till it heals.
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If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin
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Non-writers won't understand me. It sounds like a bunch of gibberish. Flowery. Contrived. But words are important to me. They are my caffeine. My chocolate. My nicotine. My love.
But, on the other hand, they are my storm, my devil, my abyss, my restless child... my adversary.
To balance them is the secret. To harmonize is the key.
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"...The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page." ~Joan Baez
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This crazy explanation is just to say, I won't be writing every day. I need to come up for air once in awhile. Breathe. Observe. Stop.
I want to pursue my art a bit. It's rough. Rusty. Forsaken. But in my mind, I see good things.
And, like my writing, it is an itch that needs to be scratched. A void that needs to be filled. A part of me that needs to be explored. Captured. Smoothed.
I will continue to try to improve my life in those ten areas. And to write about them in the best way possible. Whenever the mood strikes, my hands begin to shake- and my soul can stay silent no longer.
Thanks for being my net. My support. My friend.
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It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West ****

Today's Five Things:
1. Faith
2. Purple
3. Starlight
4. Flashlights
5. Real butter






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