MARCH 18TH ALREADY

Time flies, indeed it does.

I have dawdled through most of mine without necessarily being wasteful, more like luxuriating in it.  Always trusting there is enough and more.

I have resented some days, hours, minutes that have drug on and on.  When they say time slows, I believe it.  And it slows just when you would rather move on and through quickly.

At any rate, I have been thinking a lot lately about my writing.

I have always written…rambling stories stuffed in worn Peechees, sarcastic poetry on restaurant napkins, blazing commentary on the cardboard back of a used up notepad.   I have studied writing…books by famous authors, creative writing workbooks, online and in the mail courses designed to perfect the expression of my thoughts.   Yes, I’ve been a writing fanatic for most of my sixy-eight years.   It was not until I recently took a class by Lisa Reinicke, an hilarious, expert, successful, award winning, self-published author who not only writes the stories parents love to read to their little ones, but who spends hours, days, months marketing and selling her books at fairs and markets and online, that I realized that I am a fraud as far as being a writer.   Lisa’s class laid it all out for me.  She encouraged me, enthused at the potential she knew I could develop.   She is not a theorist; she is true believer, proof it can all be done, step by step.  Just DO it!  That’s all.

I dug up some old writing magazines I had for years, and carried them into class to show her how I studied what she was telling us.  While showing her, I realized I had had one printout since 1997.   1997!   Over twenty years, and I had never implemented the steps delineated therein.   I grew sick to my stomach while listening to Lisa read some of the paragraphs out loud, saying they were true, how cool

Over twenty years…actually, over FIFTY years I have read, studied, piddled around with the idea that I am a Writer.    I have been kidding myself, and no one else.   My name is Roxanne Herman Harrison Harrington, and I am a Reader.  I am a Reader…a Piddler…an Excuse maker…dare I say, an Unbeliever in myself as a Writer.    I have all that it takes to be a published author – stories, poems, theory, knowledge.   I have all that.   I do nothing with it.  I am an Almost-been.   I have defrauded myself…Sigh.

I am at a cross roads…should I stay, or should I go?  Should I read, or should I write?  What shall it be, Rox?   The world will not care, but will YOU?

My thanks to Lisa Reinicke for unknowingly changing my life, though I have yet to see how.  Well, that is not really true, since I have not written much since the class, blaming a bout with shingles, and hating this new place in which I live, and the illness of an old friend, yadda yadda yadda.   I have doubled down on reading.   I have written very little.  So, as of this day, I have chosen to read, which is truly what I’ve chosen all these years.

Awareness is the first step to change they say…and, Time heals all wounds, er, lessens all embarrassment.   This is not yet over.