I think the key to getting back to blogging is to just write. I hear writers talk about this all the time; the simple practice of writing is bound to produce something.
When I first started writing I only pictured my Mom in Montana as my audience; I couldn't have imagined anyone but her ever finding what I had to say about my day to day life of any interest. That got me thinking that maybe I just need to simplify it. Perhaps my goal of trying to "wow" all of you (all 3 of you) is too daunting. Maybe I just need to start out simple; just get back in the habit of writing and not try to blow you away with my wit and or wisdom.
I used to journal every day. When I was in high school and college I filled pages and pages and pages with stories of stupid boys who either loved me too much or not enough. I would copy down the lyrics to love songs and cut out articles from "Glamour." I always pictured my someday children finding my boxes of journals after I had long died and thoroughly enjoying themselves as they poured over my wise writings and lost loves. I saw myself as a real life "Francesca" from Bridges of Madison County who had lived this secret, romantic life that her children never knew about.
I stopped journaling sometime around 1999 and sometime around 2004 I found all of them and spent a whole Saturday reading them. I was horrified at my melodrama and threw all of them out except for the 2 I kept while in India and the one I kept in Alaska when I met Hot Jeff.
Speaking of Bridges of Madison County, I know everyone hated that book but I loved it. Still love it. The other book of his, Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend is so underlined and dog eared I would never dream of loaning it out to someone in fear of what they might find out about me from the underlined passages. I should re-read those books as an adult; I wonder if I would still love them. As a twenty something who had her heart broken I found them so wonderfully romantic and tawdry I couldn't help but read them over and over. I think I'll re-read them. I might make my book club read them too; just to torture them. Ha!
Aren't the words "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend" just about the most lyrical, poetic words ever? It just begs to be read in a big, red chair with and equally big, red glass of wine. I don't think I was a legal drinking age last time I read that book. So now I'll have age and liquor as an influence. I'm getting so excited I'm going to go start right now. 10:21pm and I'm going and digging it up. I don't even think its on the book shelf; it may be in a box in storage. Hmm.
Ok, who is going to read it with me?
1 comment:
From Amazon:
Only little old ladies with blue permed hair need be wary of Waller's second foray into fiction: this time around, his saccharine tale of middle-aged lovers gets to sex scenes right away. When Michael Tillman, an Iowa economics professor with a rebel streak, first lays eyes on his colleague's wife, Jellie Branden, he immediately wonders "how it would feel to grab a big handful of her hair and bend her over the dean's kitchen table." A few pages later--still in the first chapter--he is fantasizing about stripping Jellie naked and flying to the Seychelles. Though it takes a while to consummate their passion, Jellie is an iconoclast too: like Mike, she smokes and wears jeans to faculty parties, and she is pretty good in the sex fantasy department herself. But Jellie has a Dark Secret (no surprise to the reader when it is revealed) and Michael must go tearing off to India to try to locate her when she runs away from Cedar Bend.
OH MY
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