I want to write and to teach writing. To teach, I'd need a degree, so I'm out one... for now. Luckily I'm not out both. The latter only requires some protected time and my sweet friend Dora, the MacBook.
During the winter I had this stagnated posture with writing. It's scary to write a book, at least for me. It feels like there is a story, which I vaguely know, that is too complex to tell. Once I realized back in February that my only reason for waiting around was this brewing fear, I started over. I ditched the old book I'd started in the summer and began again at square one. This was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating considering that I had poured hours into this amorphous plot. I filed it away on Dora's hard drive for good.
I'm a good way into the second attempt now and, aside from a few afternoons of writer's block, it's going quite beautifully. I decided, par the advice of Lamott, to let the book write itself, to let the plot make its way like a secret garden. It's finally going well.
Rejection is the infamous horror for, well, everyone. When I found out I didn't get into school, I felt like a dandelion twice run over by a car. For some reason known only to the heavens every person within 100 miles that loves me was either out of town or busy, so I cooked myself some dinner, drank a glass of Yellowtail, and watched "Marley and Me," which made me cry a little more. I guess I needed some solo digestion time. Which I did: I digested, I cried, I sat on the floor with my back against the sink cabinet and began to think maybe I never even had any ability to tell a story, much less write a sentence, and then I let the less dysfunctional half of my brain smack the pathetic side and I stood up.
And I got back to work on my book.
