The Trouble With Writing

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The trouble with writing is starting. I want to write a book - along with every other idiot in the universe - and I just found a website with some tips for getting a book out. I found it through serendipity, of course, and something in the cosmos is directing me back to writing - muse flutters out the window like those mosquito/mayfly critters sparkling just now in the low midmorning sun, batting at the back door, the clicks of wings on glass. I read my Journeywoman newsletter, or the first few lines, and ended up at the site of Stephanie Elizondo Griest, who wrote, among other things, "100 Places Every Woman Should Go." She has a synopsis of how to write a book proposal, which I’ve duly copied, ready for my own. The proposal comes after the book is essentially written, however. So, still, I have to start.

My book will be a compendium (is that the right word?) of my passions: poetry, travel, photography. And I just over-toasted some Cape Seed Bread, and I was thinking - food. The book could have food in it too. Why the hell not.

I like this internal movement, the actual desire to write again. Could be it comes from being absolutely bored with all my mindless passtimes. The signal came last weekend when I bought myself several books about and for writers. I had stopped buying such books, since I wasn’t writing and my shelf was full of them already. I had stopped buying them because it seemed such a farce to buy them and not actually write. (Even reading them would have been some justification, come to think of it.) But spending all this money helps me access the sense of guilt I seem to need as motivation for writing. I’m thinking of those words-of-wisdom so often uttered, that if you have a gift you must share it.

So I have the instructions, the books, the guilt, the idea, and, if I’m lucky, a small gift to share. All I have to do is start.



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