The Sublime Passage

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware off, no shortcut.
– Stephen King, On Writing

Stephen King is right. I can no longer deny the harsh reality that if I want to write then I have to…. well….write.

I’ve got the reading thing down. I think my commitment to reading is sufficiently compulsive and obsessive.

I had dinner with a good friend a few nights ago and we spent a lot of time talking about my consulting work.  At the end of a long discussion about some of my projects she asked me how I was going to make time for writing now that I was clearly so busy with the challenge of running my own business. She’s one of those friends who isn’t afraid to ask you questions that will make you uncomfortable because they force you to deal with something you’ve been avoiding. Read more

There are some things we hold on to even though we know full well that we shouldn’t.  We recognize that the time for letting go has long arrived, yet still we hold on.

I know for example that it’s immature to want to prove to all the men who -  in my mind – have rejected me just how wrong they were. Yet I continue to cling to the  “I’ll show him what a big mistake he made rejecting me / he’ll be sorry he let me go”  bone. Read more

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.

(Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” The New York Times Magazine, December 5, 1976.

I absolutely LOVE this quote. Love it, love it, love it. Did I mention that I love it??

The Valentines day writing group was great. We started with a prompt inspired by the 25 Random Things About Me phenomenon that’s  occurring on Facebook, and were asked to write 25 random things about love. Holy writer’s block. I hated this prompt. I’m not sure why. Maybe its because I don’t do well with lists. All I know is that it was hard for me.  I found myself feeling stuck and unhappy doing it.

For the second prompt we were each handed a poem and this time the writing flowed without effort. I thought I’d share that piece here because it really seemed to connect with people. Ironically, its all about love.

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