November 17, 2017 by Amy

Uh Oh

That night you hit 11:25 p.m. and realize, “Oh, crap. I didn’t make my picture of the day and I didn’t write my post of the day and now I’m tired and have no subjects for either. Outstanding.”

All the Famous Writers say that to be a writer, you must write every single day. No matter what. Even if you have nothing to write. So here I am, with nothing to write. It’s 11:30 on a Friday night, after all. My brain is mush. I’m ready for bed. I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow…a rare Saturday where we have nothing planned. And yet, here I am, pecking away at a keyboard.

My picture today is a fragment of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, my current book. I’d say I’m a little over a third of the way through it. It’s an actual book, not my Kindle, so I don’t have that handy little percentage at the bottom. The book is exquisitely written, and full of a terrible beauty that tinges every story about the atrocity of slavery. The book I just finished was Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, something more along the lines of brain candy with a tricky, underlying message of survival.

So tonight I’m reading rather than writing, which is also a worthy pursuit and necessary for writers, or so I’ve been told by all the Famous Writers.

Okay. I’m good. I’ve made a picture and I’ve written some words – such as they are – and now I can go to bed and sleep in tomorrow and start all over. And maybe type something of actual interest.

#blog#personal essay#writing