If I have to look at Oscar Wilde’s face one more time with his taunting, strong jaw and piercing eyes that say, “Write, damnit! Write!” then I may as well just throw my Kindle against the wall. It’s been collecting dust ever since I finished reading Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen on it because I thought I’d never read anything else on it. I’m super lazy in ordering books online and when I go to Barnes & Noble I inadvertently end up sitting in the café section reading something until I’m finished with it. It’s my own personal library because I don’t have one. In the fifteen years that I’ve lived in Springfield I have never had a library card except when we lived in what we affectionately called “Ghetto West”. The other houses I’ve lived in required me to live within the city limits, but I keep ending up in Unincorporated Springfield and it’s like a black mark on my track record of reading. My own scarlet letter that tells everyone, “I’m a rebel! I live in unincorporated areas! I don’t own a library card!”
Anyway, Oscar is sitting on the home page of my Kindle just staring at me. “Buy another book already, would you?” he pleads earnestly. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like for me to spend my hard earned dollars on something that I won’t even have time to read!” When John Milton looks at me I just stick out my tongue. Lewis Carroll just makes me giggle. But there’s something about Emily Dickinson. When she looks at me from the Kindle screen I find myself apologizing to her. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to write here and it’s just not flowing yet. The ideas are plentiful, but the writing is jumbled and awkward.” I can write for myself, but the thought of putting things down on paper because a literary agent told me to or because my publisher says that I need more words is a daunting task. Just sitting behind my blog and bitching about the mundane doings in everyday life? Piece of cake, baby.
All that was to say that I’m trying to write a book here. It’s day 4 of the new year and for the first time ever I’m committing to this in such a passionate way that I’m scaring myself. This is terrifying and incredibly freeing to just put down as many words as I can. How this will change the way I blog I don’t know yet. Will I end up apologizing to you, my readers, the same way I do to Miss Dickinson? Who knows?
For now, though, I’m searching for things that I didn’t ever let myself search for in the past. I’m trying to locate literary agents and publishers who have put out books like the one I’m trying to write and needing far more eye cream at night these last four days because when the urge to write strikes me I’m just going to grab it by the horns (or balls? is it balls?) and run with it. (Oooohh. No. Not balls then. Ouch.) Even if that means I’m awake at 3 a.m. because a thought has to get down on paper.
If you have any advice, I’m taking it. If you know anybody who could help a poor, starving mum with her child in a baby carriage sitting at a cafe and trying to write on scraps of paper…hold on. That was J.K. Rowling. I’m delusional now.
Hold me?
No. Just cheer me on, please. If ever I needed a cheering section, it’s now. I’m paralyzed with fear and doubt.