Purposefully Erratic

Bionic Tumbleweed

Approaching Aiguille du Midi Approaching Aiguille du Midi

Traveling has left me caught in an expanding web of magnificent eccentrics. Last night I had dinner with a pair of mountain bikers I met in Chamonix this summer. Though we’ve known each other less than three months, I knew by the light in their eyes – knew by the grin that started in the right corner of Tom’s mouth and didn’t stop until the left corner of Gloria’s (across the room) – that their latest expedition was a grade A sufferfest. A two hour bike ride that turned into eight, uphill over roots and boulders, through the viscous, silty mud that forms in the rain that really hasn’t stopped falling all season. Only a coke and a few madeline’s to sustain them.

I can’t ride a two-wheeler. The closest I came was the red tricycle I scooted along on as a toddler, or the wheelchair…

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Working to regain my momentum

The grades are in the system–and aside from the usual grade complaints–the Fall semester is in the books. So now, I have no excuse to not write. Except that I just can’t get my rear moving. What the hell is wrong with me? My focus for the last year and a half has been working on this novel and getting it right. And now when I have some solid ideas about how to do that, I feel paralyzed to do it. Is it the fear of, once again, getting not quite there and having to start over once again? Or is it the fear that maybe I do have the solutions, and once I fix it,  then I’ll have to actually begin the painful process of trying to get it published? That maybe there is safety in the drafting process. It’s a cocoon of work protecting you from the harsh reality of rejection. You can still say you’re a writer because you are WRITING. But when you’re done writing, and you’re not-yet published, well what are you then? Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of having to find out.