everyday i open my blog. i stare at the screen. i edit the layout of the pages and the color of the background. i mess around with formatting and visuals. i contemplate writing. i look at the long list of ideas i’ve collected over the course of the day. everyday in the month of august i have opened my blog and not written a word. so now here i am writing.
i like writing. that’s not the problem. i bring a tiny notebook and pen with me everywhere i go. i have written over 500 pages in the notes app on my phone. i have 5 drafts written up for this very blog, and 25 more in my head. i like to write and rhyme in my mind as i walk.
anne lamott wrote a book, ‘bird by bird’, on this very root i’ve found myself in. well not me specifically, but writers in general. when faced with the uneasiness and uncomfortability of writing, in collaboration with the desperate need to write well, one finds themselves in my position- hunched over in a straight back chair in limbo between the keyboard and the delete-button. writing feels like an unclimbable mountain, like trying to summit everest while living under the poverty line. she offers up a piece of ‘advice’ given to her by her son who was attempting to memorize a large amount of unique birds:
we will just take it one at a time. bird by bird.
i have this written on the inside of that little tiny notebook i carry around. in there, everything easily comes word by word. although this is only a bit more public than the inside of a private journal, from now on, i’ll take it bird by bird.
Feral in the barrel 