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currently reading:
Two Queens in One Isle
projects:
I plan on finishing this afghan by the end of the week. Woohoo!
mood of the day:
feeling pretty alright today
I have a wish list
Gene Fowler
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
I am grateful for:
1. After-rain warmth
2. Tongues
3. Refrigerators
4. Sisters!
5. Photographs
You can read the full details below and get the elusive "why."
I was proofreading an article titled "Origin of Force that Shapes Planetary Nebulae Revealed." I had to be sure all the paragraphs of the original text were included in the draft I was proofing. I do this by checking the first words of the paragraph and the last. In doing so, I love how this sounds:
The cosmic shapes
The model spring
The idea realized
The new momentum
The dynamo sun
Sunspots corona
the end
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11.29.2001
Have I ever mentioned, aside from what I wrote in my writing & literature page that I started a writing group on my university campus? It was called Club WRiTe.
I started writing when I was about twelve. At least, this is when I consciously realized that writing was fun and something I wanted to spend time doing. Before then, I just remember wanting to teach my younger brother and sisters how to read and write. Even after they already knew how. They were always the students. I was always the teacher. My most ecstatic day in elementary school was with Mr. Boen at Arnone Elementary School. He allowed meto teach a 20-minute health segment of class. I took out eleven books about the brain and was determined to make my students geniuses. Better even than the best surgeon.
Mr. Boen was a saint when I ended up blabbing for 40-minutes before he cut me off, saying thank you, and job well done.
Well, when I was twelve, I started writing poems. A lot of poems. I don't remember ever writing stories until I was about 13. And never did I declare I wanted to be a writer. Archaeologist? Yes. Photojournalist? Geez, yes. Peace Corps forever? Absolutely. Writer? What? No. I did read a lot, but actually writing never occurred to me.
Then, in high school, I was looking for books about journalism, photojournalism and the Peace Corps. In the journalism section of our never-let-them-know-too-much library, I came across Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I didn't read the cover, just the spines. Bones sounded like facts to me (hey, I knew my allegories), so I brought it home.
In her book, I discovered a whole new world that was incredibly exciting. Writing about food, about running, about laughing and nakedness. She allowed me the liberty to write about sex at fifteen years old. I had discovered something I adored, that not only made me feel free and wise, but womanly for the first time. Good for the first time. Intelligent and in control. I was hooked.
By the time college rolled around, I had notebooks piling up filled with words that I had created. The summer of my junior year (before my senior year), I went to Bennington College for a summer program. I worked on dance and writing. I felt like I knew more about this thing called writing than any other person there. I was a queen, skilled in the art, and they were subjects just out of the caves to which the former leader had led them. I scribbled harder and faster when I knew people were watching me.
In 1995, my first semester at Mount Holyoke, my father Phil died while riding his motorcycle home to Vermont after visiting me and my sister KPR at Brandeis. He hit a 900-lb. moose at 80 mph. The day he died, September 24, was the last day I wrote for two years. I scribbled on sheets of paper here and there, but only to cry. When I moved home to Vermont after being in Connecticut for those two years, I yearned to pick up a pen again. I was home. I was where I always somehow felt my father was all the years I was away. Being home, I could sense him more than ever while also realizing that he was gone. It was final. It was definite. I was sure. Surety meant I could move on. So I picked up a pen.
I wrote a story called Geisha. It was about masks, although I don't think that point ever got across. I'll post the story tomorrow or today, depending on how much time I have. I think I have it here somewhere. Anyway, I decided to go back to school. I went to the UR and my second semester there, realized I needed help in getting back to writing every day. Doing what I used to call, "Writing writing and practic naked." That's how writing felt to me, so that's what I did.
First, writing is a practice. If I ever expected to get better, I had to practice. But writing also made me feel different than I do in every day life. It gave me the thrill of feeling naked, but of people watching me. And better: I wouldn't realize I was naked when they were watching; writing is the realization of that. That's how it felt.
So I started a writing group called Club WRiTe. We wrote about glass, about cherries, about garbage, about twins, about poets. We listened to the tick-tock of the kitchen timer and scribbled merrily. I miss it. I lost it again. I'll get it back. I hope.
I was thinking of maybe trying to start an online collaboration. I post writing ideas and then we all work on that idea for say: a week. 20 minutes. An hour. We set a time once a week, and we all do it once a week. On our computer, by hand, however. And then when we finish, we post it. A burb, is it? A new ring? What have you. I don't know how to work it except individually. We all collect names and list them on our site and create a page for Practicing Naked. If anybody is interested, let me know.
Have a good day friends. I'll miss you as I encounter my own challenges. I've been trying to make plans. Trying to say to myself, in a very stern voice, "Go to the coffee shop for an hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Go and write. Do something!" But alas, my voice is not so stern. It sounds kind of whiny, actually.
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