Baggage and blank pages.

Yep. I got me some.

Particularly when it comes to writing.

I fret and fret before anything ever gets on a page--and consequently--NOTHING gets on a page.

I wrote my master's thesis in three weeks.

I wrote my dissertation in about the same length of time.

I don't recommend it.

There were days that I wrote while releasing a sustained guttural moaning--every exhalation carried the sound of my fears and anxiety.

There were days that I talked what I wrote--carrying on a conversation with my fingers.

Sometimes, I would just laugh, LAUGH through some points--usually the points at which I felt the most like a sham.

But IT. GOT. DONE. And some of it got done well.

I've got an article coming out this fall--my coauthor will tell you she had to push and prod to get me to submit my edits. Sure, part of that was the immensity of everything on my plate this winter--but part of it was the paralyzing dread of facing the blank page on the screen.

Sometimes when it gets to horrific, I walk away and pick up a legal pad instead. That has always seemed to help keep things moving forward.

I guess this blog functions in that manner. I mean, I'm technically writing. And it's flowing pretty easily, actually. Perhaps the biggest success of giving over to the A-Z challenge is reminding myself kinesthetically what writing feels like.

Yesterday, after I launched (re-launched?) this blog again, I was chatting online with one of my former students, and riffing on my writer's block blues. He said to me "why don't you take your own advise?"

...

I was so caught up on the dissonance of those blues that I couldn't imagine what he was talking about.

So he reminded me of the words that I have often passed along: you can edit crap. you can't edit a blank page.

So I'll just get on with it.

About Time: or, Alphabet Soup

So.

I'm currently in Northern California, attending an awesome ensemble theatre festival (check out foolsfury.org for more info on the Fury Factory)--and I should be writing...well, several things, frankly.

And I've been doing anything but.

Including resurrecting this blog. It seems fitting that my last entry was also on the summer solstice--two years ago. Two years is a long time, and so much has happened. But the gift of this summer is letting some of what has passed, well...stay in the past. It's time to move forward, without unnecessary burdens. And its about time.

One of the burdens I'm hoping to set down is the burden of writing right. Having a noisome internal editor who craves perfection like sugar or crack can be crippling. It's that kind of writer's block that leaves words and phrases rattling around in the echo chamber of your brain, and seems to get particularly inspired when your physically incapable of writing those phrases down--like when you're in the shower, or on the road.

It is so easy to be defeated by it--but I'm choosing to no longer be the victim of my internal editor.

So, I'm poaching an idea from an old friend, who recently completed an A-Z blog challenge--and challenging myself to write an entry a day for the next 26 days (one entry for each letter of the alphabet) in order to jump start the habit of a daily writing practice.

And since it has been two years since I've written anything here, I'm going to assume that it's a false accountability...still, somewhere in the ether, the tally is now set at ONE.