A Good Writing Day

The thing about writing is that it can be so stop-and-go.  When it's flowing, you feel fabulous.  You have faith in Life, and in your future; there is a lilt in your voice and a bounce in your step.  Everything is clipping along nicely, the Universe is in good order, and you feel like being kind to everybody, even telemarketers.

Then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, you're blocked.  Painful.  Agitating.  Your happy thoughts are gone.  You feel like Wendy, tumbling from the sky after Tinker Bell snatched away the pixie dust.  Your thoughts limp haltingly along, like a crippled centipede after somebody pulled off half its legs. I have never had the pleasure of being hideously constipated for an entire month, but I know exactly what it feels like.  It feels like Writer's Block.

Then - a miracle! Presto!  Just as you are sitting there, staring glumly at your laptop for the third day in a row and wondering why you should continue to eat, breathe, and take up space on this earth that could be given up to somebody who could actually do something - you type a sentence.  It's not a good sentence, but - at least you've gotten something written.  And what you wrote suggests the next sentence, so you put that one in, too.  Then you need a line a dialogue.  Which elicits another line of dialogue -a reply from the other character on the same page.    Then you go back, and you frown at that first sentence again, and you tinker with it, and it kind of turns into a pretty good sentence - although you may come back and change it a little bit later, you aren't quite sure yet.  Pretty soon you're going clickety-click, clickety-click, and then the key turns in the front door and your family walks in and you look up foggily and realize that everybody is going to be having take-out for dinner again.

That's what I call a good writing day.  Today I had one.