Dear Don

A revolutionary thing happened to me this week. Something that has never happened in the history of my history. I wrote a complete draft of a short story in one afternoon. I had a dream on Thursday afternoon as I was trying to sleep off what has been trying to become a head cold. The dream was vivid and interesting with strong characters and story line. I worked on it for hours. I finished it before I went to bed. Now, normally during the final week of the semester amid seas of paper writing and researching and grading I would not take the time to write a short story but this one just appeared and demanded attention and I gave it and it was wonderful. I had recently been having a conversation with a writing friend about the difficulty in carving out time to do what writers do. We were discussing the challenge of trying to devote time each day to writing. She recommended reading Virgina Woolf's A Room of Her Own which I have on my night stand. Another friend recommended I read Don Quixote as a fun summer read. I started that one first. In the prologue, Cervantes addresses the reader. He says of the writing process, "Repose, a quiet corner, fragrant fields, cloudless skies, murmuring brooks, spiritual calm--all contribute their share in making the most barren of muses temm and bring forth to the world such offspring as will fill it with wonder and delight." Funny that Cervantes recommends repose and quiet corners for listening in order to bring forth those wonderful words. It is in beginning to read my first novel of the year that I have rediscovered the joy of fiction. I haven't written any fiction for a while and it was lovely to just have fun with a story. Non-fiction is deeply introspective and ponderific. You have to think, think, think on life and what it means and how you want it to mean. I love this work and I am enjoying writing a memoir but fiction has the element of PLAY. That play is powerful, pleasurable and fruitful. Also, reading is magical. I haven't read something that opened up those neural pathways and gave me a reason to write for fun in a long, long time. I miss it. I miss the time when I could just enjoy my work without trying so hard. Graduate school, the masters portion anyway, is almost over for me and I am so looking forward to producing some things that I want to do. Because I am a writer.