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.