Dear Blog,
I have missed you. I haven't been posting while I continue my journey into writing and publishing. The business of this career has been an interesting learning curve and I have finally reached the point where I can let go of my writing enough to be ready to publish. Others would argue that I should have been in the place years ago, but I wanted to feel like I was competent enough to put the work out there.
And I've been busy interning with Entangled which has been extremely helpful with being able to see weaknesses in my own writing. And I been busy making connections with other writers and realizing there are some I may not want to be connected with. I've been speaking for a variety of audiences. There's been regular writing, editing in advice from my editor and working on something new in my business plan.
Yesterday I came up something that reminded me of something I may have been forgetting to do with my writing. Have fun.
I went to pay my water bill and saw a couple loading water into a large portable container located in the back of their truck.
This brought memories of our family going to "town". The tiny business district in the extremely small town I grew up in had less than ten businesses and was only two blocks from our house, but it was "town" to us. While our parents shopped or went to the post office, my siblings and I would often go to the side of the bank and down to the back side of the gun/grocery/everything else store where water could be purchased from the city. Rural folks often didn't have good wells, so they would buy a truckload container's worth of water for use in their homes.
It probably says something about the lack of excitement in our town that I loved watching this process. It seemed miraculous that so much water could come out of this hose that wasn't near a pond or a lake. I hadn't mastered the concept of plumbing yet. My favorite part and the most anticipated moment for everyone was when the tank was full and the extra water would squirt out the top like a geyser. It was glorious in my mind. As I mentioned, we did not have a lot of activities in my small town.
But I think that was the lesson I needed concerning my writing. All of the groups, conferences, Facebook and Twitter messages are awesome to be a part of, but it is the simple joy of having the words I have imagined flow out of me to the point that they burst worth that is why I write. Everything else is just a container to work in.
