NOT YOUR BABY

I joined a writer’s group in 1996, wow. . . 20 years ago. I’d been journaling most of my adult life but it was the first time I put my stuff out there, in harm’s way. If you pay attention and do the work you get better, you make good friends and you learn. You learn things about yourself that you wouldn’t otherwise. Getting it right, What It Is & What It Means, it has to conform to the discipline of language. The consistency and credibility of my own bias, whatever it may be, is always being scrutinized. There is a learning curve. At first you want others to like what you’ve written. Then you figure out it’s not about what you think or the clever way you turn a phrase. It’s about communicating efficiently, effectively. 

Somewhere up the curve, writers discover that writing in and of itself is a great way to process information. You want a clear eye and good recall on things that matter. So we take notes in class. For me it wasn’t so much storing information as it was the process. By paraphrasing you take ownership of an idea or sequence and you make it your own. When I went back to review I didn’t have to read the whole thing after all, it belonged to me. When the writer is also the intended audience, you can get away with all kinds of indiscretions. If you want it to be private it’s not journaling; it’s keeping a diary. The first thing I learned in group was, don’t write down anything that you don’t want others to read. The second thing was, it’s not your baby, not your flesh and blood. It doesn’t need protection but it will need revision. You don’t have to heed your critics but you should pay attention and appreciate the fact that they took the time. So I write for my own sake and I write for other eyes. I welcome critique but it’s not an issue. My views on music, sports, politics, religion, formal education, school of life, family and cuisine are all well documented somewhere. I write stories that entertain and stories that inform. Sometimes it’s therapeutic, sometimes it’s just scratching an itch. 

When your career has been pinched off and they change the locks you either reinvent yourself or devolve into a toddler again. Most of the leaves are down and I see two, new squirrel nests in the top of the Box Elder tree over my driveway. Now, they have careers. They still have important work to do before food sources dry up and the freeze shuts things down. I’m no better off than the squirrel; at least he has a job. I just live longer and think about things like what happens when we actually do balance the federal budget and someone really does invent the perpetual motion machine? Thinking is risky business. Most of us don’t really think. What we do is remember what we already know and reinforce what we already believe. Humor is another way of entertaining an idle mind. I write. You never know where the muse will take you.