Who knew that starting a blog would get the writing juices flowing?

Who am I kidding? I should have known I'd get addicted to something like this. I know I've been writing these huge long pieces that I don't know if anyone will actually sit and wade through. What can I say? Even if no one reads them, they're working for me.

Everything I experience and read and see, I want to write about it. I'm starting to make lists of topics to tackle. Mwah ha ha ha. That's an evil cackle if you aren't aware of how it's spelled. I could end up writing all day long, torturing my readers with constant posts and the labrynthine twists and turns of my brain.

I want to start writing poetry again. I want to start writing my novel again. I feel less afraid of screwing it up, for some reason, since I've started the blog. Maybe it's just the physical habit of sitting and writing, the fingers moving over the keyboard, the necessary staring into space and letting the mind wander, the rereading and revising and editing, because, yes I edit these suckers at least three times before I send them out.

Maybe this is a lesson to myself and to everyone out there who wants to write or be creative. It takes practice. It takes stamina. It takes writing muscles. It's like being an athlete, really. You've got to train to do it. Maybe the training isn't lifting weights or running laps, but how the hell do you expect to create if you don't prepare the field? Read the wonderful things out there, pay attention to the startling details of life... oh, yeah, and writing, writing, writing.

Maybe the key to being a writer, to me being a writer, is to write so much that I don't have time between the keystrokes to get afraid and doubtful and insecure.

Not that I've ever, ever done this, but I've heard the hardest part of running a marathon is somewhere in the middle, when you're well started and the adrenaline from the start, and the energy from your freshness has gone away. I heard that somewhere in there, your muscles ache, your feet burn, your lungs strain-- but you just keep going, one step after the next, and then, and then, you finally become zen, you become the road, the motion, the air flowing in and around and through you.

Writing can be like that. In the first flush of the idea, I am ready to go, but somewhere in there, the doubts creep in. "This sucks. I suck. I can't do it. Why do I even try?" Right about then, Ricki Lake gets really fascinating. So do the dirty dishes and the bills piling up. And I really have to go to the corner store to get toilet paper. My ass hurts from sitting still and my hands cramp from typing. God I need coffee, and food, and a shower, and really, I should get out of the house so that I can meet people and do things, because do I really want to be a couch potato all day, all my life?

The equivalent of heel blisters and burning muscles.

In order to BE a writer, you really have to-- I mean, I really have to have the will and focus of a marathon runner. Damn, and I thought being an artist was different. Even physically-- that food requirement, really kind of necessary to keep up the work of making your brain create whole worlds out of nothing. (Is it really possible to do that on only caffeine, cream and sugar? [oh, Rowena, take care of yourself.])

It's funny, a lot of people think that in order to be an Artist, or to live the life of an artist, you have to drink alot, smoke a lot, take in drugs to alter the hold on your brain that your fears have. Me, I don't understand that. Okay, I understand the desire to find something to turn of the fears, like a magic pill, but drugs, drinking, even staying out all night and not getting enough sleep, that puts my body and brain into a state that really isn't up to marathon running.

Because I want to get to that state where I am on a natural high. Not high from foreign substances, but high from all the fire shooting through my brain, my body, my heart, and out onto the page.

I want to be in that state where each word written leads me to the next, and the next, and the next. (one foot infront of the last.)

I want to be in the state where I am so drawn into the world that I am creating in my story or my poem or my painting, for that matter, that if the phone rings, I jump.

I want to be in that state where I AM the story, or the poem, or the painting, or the dance, or the song.

MMMM. Have you ever been there? That state? So much better than being drunk.

It is delicious.