Scratching

Sorry for the title, but if the desire to write is an itch, then doesn't it follow that the act of writing is then scratching?

I feel on fire. I didn't get to write this weekend, poor Fai had to work, but yesterday and today have been good. I successfully coordinated the nap times of the girls, and last night I sat up till almost midnight working. I'm writing hot and it's coming out good!

I'm finishing off a collection of essays on writing, then I'm going to force myself to finish King's "On Writing" (the beginning didn't really interest me) then I'm going to reread "Letters to a Young Poet" and then "The Power of Myth". Basically I'm emerging myself in everything that makes me want to write more. I've also got out my Rumi poems, and I might be watching "Little Women" soon.

I'm living it, and breathing it, and eating it. Life is going on around me and I'm in that too. I'm snuggling Nadira and I'm reading to Anjali. I'm keeping the house {relatively} clean and I'm doing the errands like salting the sidewalk and going to the post office. I'm alive and functioning and on fire with words. When I'm not writing I'm planning. I think I'm on the verge of what Julianna Baggot once told me. She told me her writing process is interuption. In one of her classes at FSU, she commented that if a writer said they were going to India for a year, their friends would say "wow, what a great book you'll get out of that" but when a writer has kids, other writers look at that as something that will somehow detract from their writing. Julia is relatively successful as a commercial writer, a literary writer, and also as a children's writer. She's one of my role models, she wrote her first two novels as a stay at home mom while her husband worked as a lawyer. Now they live off of her writing. They have four kids. I love that.

So there's my obsession. Whether or not it's publishable is yet to be seen. My goal is a first draft by April 1st. April is national write a book month. I'm turning it into my edit a book month.

"Woman is a ray of God.
She is not that earthly beloved:
she is creative, not created."
-Rumi

One day I will go outside and read Rumi at the top of my lungs completely naked. That is how good poetry should be read.