They say you should keep a pen and pad beside the bed, so when you wake in the middle of the night with a thought, you can write it down. Otherwise it will be lost by morning.
The problem is, the only thoughts I wake up with in the wee hours of the the morning are: I’ve left the cordless phone in the rain! Or: I threw out the receipt for those ugly pants! And the thought is never lost; the memory of running in the rain in my bathrobe to riffle through the garbage bins on the boulevard at 3:00am, swatting mosquitoes and hoping the people crazy enough to be outside at this hour notice how tough I look, is still very much with me in the morning. Not that these thoughts shouldn’t be written down. (This post would be 100 words shorter if I hadn’t.) As it turns out, one of my fictional characters shares my propensity for leaving things out at night. More words on a page somewhere.
The writer in me, it turns out, is a morning person. So while the critic’s a-snooze, this writer brews.
* I’ve read new, original poems at 3 recent Speaking Crow poetry reading events.
* I’ve handed my 19-page fiction piece (the one I quoted and lamented the pace of in my very first post) to another writer for comments this month, and since hearing her say she loved it, in past couple days, I’ve drafted the remaining scenes. All I need to do is organize and flesh them out a bit, but the tough part is done! I have no doubt it will be ready to fly into the hands of the Prairie Fire writing contest judges by the fall.
* After thinking about it for years, I just (30 seconds ago) emailed a personal essay submission to Brain Child magazine.
So happy birthday to me from my meteorically munching mice!