Daily Archives: August 5, 2009

This card states that we often picture “writing” as sitting at a desk in a big chair; that is exactly how I picture it and I have often described my new setting as the ideal place that it is but the card says “move” so tonight I write from a living room chair with my feet resting on an ottoman.  This is comfortable too, but since I moved my writing location, I also find myself thinking of the way life moves on.  We start out with plan “A” thinking that everything will go as planned and then the plans change, people come and go, and life moves forward.  In September, we will officially be empty nesters.  After spending 25+ years raising children, thinking about children, planning for them, worrying about them and dreaming of their future, they are finally living it and we are left in a new place.  This is a place that is vaguely familiar from a time we dwelled in 29 years ago.  It is comfortable and safe with fun sprinkled in for good luck.  Moving always has its surprises, and its disappointments.  Moving takes getting used to but it is inevitable, unavoidable like aging, which we hope brings with its approach, wisdom.

Reading about the realistic goals of successful writers serves as inspiration and also gives me ideas of several different goal setting strategies.  I think, at this point, with my just born writing career crying for attention, I will choose to commit to writing every evening for 15 minutes.  This Blog is a pretty easy way to accomplish that goal and to possibly get helpful comments.   Using the Observation Deck as motivation at least takes away the pressure of coming up with a topic and gives me insight into the ideas of other writers.  This goal also gives me some latitude because I can apply the evening’s topic (card selected) to pretty much anything I am thinking about or that happened that day.  15 minutes is realistic because every night is different and I also want to stay committed to yoga, my friends and family, art and reading.  Once school starts up again, my energy level will probably drop a few degrees too.

I often wonder where this drive to write comes from and I wonder if it is genetic.  I see pictures of my birth-father and know of his history of being a writer, living in New York struggling to write for a living and living to write.  I wonder what level of success he achieved?  I also am fascinated by my mother’s ability to teach others to write so successfully and yet she doubted her own abilities as a writer.  I bet she would have been a wonderful writer.  A man she worked with at Pages Books for Children, who is now in graduate school at the University of Iowa, writing, dedicated his play to her.  Wow, she had an impact on so many.  It seems like everywhere I look, there are signs beckoning me to enter the writing world, to follow the path, to get inside my own head and to explore hidden worlds.  How does one begin?  I guess for me, finding motivation, sitting in the big leather swivel-rocker at the writing desk, with my feet up on the Amish milking stool, staring out at the darkness and seeing my reflection floating, the path is becoming much clearer.