from Prairie Lights!

This is my new addiction.  I am starting back in the archives, around 2004, and passing the hours of the work day listening to authors read from their work and take questions.  For me, it is fascinating.  I truly believe that every author is someone I can learn from about what it takes to be a good editor and to be a good writer.  And I feel like I AM learning!  At work even!

I’ve made vague mutterings and gestures in the past toward my own writing and this is the sort of thing that makes me think it will happen some day.  Sometimes I listen and I feel bummed about not having created anything like that myself, but most of the time I listen and feel challenged and stretched.  Even if it’s just an author reading aloud… for me it becomes advice.  It also makes me hungry to challenge my own creativity and to be disciplined enough to actually WRITE.  It sounds silly, but author after author after author has said that the number one thing to do to become a (better) writer is:  write.  Write every single day.  No matter what and even if its crap or directionless or confusing.  Just. Write.  And whenever I hear that I leap up and grab my pencils and sit down and….!!!  Nothing.  I start looking at the page and can feel a character (usually) or a plot scrambling around at the farrrrr corners of my brain.  Tiny flecks of information like someone sprinkled glitter all over my brain and then swept it up.  But we all know that glitter never ever ever goes away and so these bits are left lying around to catch the light and make me CRAZY trying to get at them.  

So that’s what I am trying to do.  Get at those glittery bits.