How many

pages, how many

notebooks, how many words

and characters, how many mornings and

how many nights, how many pens with ink in purple

and blue and black and red, and how many bursts to organize

time, how many resolutions in the new year to gain discipline, how

many books read on craft and character, how many for the love of fiction

alone and how many ideas started and stopped, how many born full term only

to rest in isolation, how many sweet scenes, how many sad, how many sweet,

sexy flashing bright contacts and how many spirits whispering secrets into sand and sea

and deaf ears, how many children meeting other children, how many conferences

or contacts with other writers and how many web sites and articles and wishes

and dreams and tears of frustration, and how many blank pages faced

bravely, cowardly, tentatively, and how many ‘ly’ words slashed

unceremoniously and how many times on my knees before

gods and great spirits will it take to claim my writing self

and put her in the middle

of my life?

 

PS–In this picture I was writing in my notebook on a train in Canada during our Oyate adventures.  It must have been ten years ago now. How many tables have I sat at and scribbled in a notebook?

 

 

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