"The Sky's the Limit"
Sunday August 28 2005
It’s nice to wake up at dawn because it was so bright and so hot yesterday. (O I wonder if that is the first bird call.) At dawn the outside world is cool. And it is gray green world, the greens are still dark because the sun has not risen over mountains to turn them radiant, and the sky is the cool color of dawn’s early light. For the desert it is the cool breath of early morning. A sparrow is in the mesquite tree, but this dun colored light makes the tree and the sparrow blend, only its movement shows it is there. In winter this is an icy time, when I can see my breath, and have to turn on the space heater near my toes, and wear two sweatshirts. It is a long impatient wait for the Sun to be high enough to bring the heat and light to sunbathe in backyard in shorts and halter. But in summer this cool of early morning is what we live for. When you live in a blistering world, you need a time of perfect loveliness. O the sparrow flew back again. There is only enough light to make out his movement on branch. O his friend arrived. Awww they are now on same branch together. O one flew off and one stayed. O that chirping is him. Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.
I stopped writing soon after I moved to Tucson and did not return to it for 12 years. The idea of writing again interested me. It had begun when Bill said his Higher Self told him, “Anne thinks she has already written everything she can possibly write, but this is not true, her writing lies ahead of her.” This interested me because it was exactly what I did think. I thought I had already done it, that I had written everything there was for me to write, that I had completed it. I just knew the one thing I had not completed was bringing it into the world, and that seemed like a chore I had to face.
Sunday August 28 2005
It’s nice to wake up at dawn because it was so bright and so hot yesterday. (O I wonder if that is the first bird call.) At dawn the outside world is cool. And it is gray green world, the greens are still dark because the sun has not risen over mountains to turn them radiant, and the sky is the cool color of dawn’s early light. For the desert it is the cool breath of early morning. A sparrow is in the mesquite tree, but this dun colored light makes the tree and the sparrow blend, only its movement shows it is there. In winter this is an icy time, when I can see my breath, and have to turn on the space heater near my toes, and wear two sweatshirts. It is a long impatient wait for the Sun to be high enough to bring the heat and light to sunbathe in backyard in shorts and halter. But in summer this cool of early morning is what we live for. When you live in a blistering world, you need a time of perfect loveliness. O the sparrow flew back again. There is only enough light to make out his movement on branch. O his friend arrived. Awww they are now on same branch together. O one flew off and one stayed. O that chirping is him. Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp.
I stopped writing soon after I moved to Tucson and did not return to it for 12 years. The idea of writing again interested me. It had begun when Bill said his Higher Self told him, “Anne thinks she has already written everything she can possibly write, but this is not true, her writing lies ahead of her.” This interested me because it was exactly what I did think. I thought I had already done it, that I had written everything there was for me to write, that I had completed it. I just knew the one thing I had not completed was bringing it into the world, and that seemed like a chore I had to face.
And then it actually did get on the agenda, about me going back to my writing. Bill said his Higher Self said “Anne’s writing can bring in money.” And I assumed that meant what was up in my closet, the writing I had done, and I recognized I had to face bringing that into the world, even tho I didn’t want to face it. My mind had began to wrap itself around facing that. And then Sue started to say “you have to go back to your writing Anne, you have a talent for it.” And I got an email from Helen saying “when are you going to go back to your writing, I want to read your new writing.” And she forwarded Basha’s email saying “when is Anne going to go back to her writing.”
And then Maria took me to that how to get published meeting at Barnes and Noble, and I listened intently to all the changes since I had left beating my head against a concrete wall. I heard about print-on-demand where you only pay 300 dollars. “It’s a real book?” I kept saying. “It has a spine? It looks like a book? It’s the same as other books?” I paid a lot of attention to that because I had accepted the obligation to get what I had written in NYC out of my closet and into the world, I wanted an easy cheap way to do that.
But of course something else took place at that meeting. It was just (Jimmy) the science fiction writer, Steve, Maria, and me. But the science fiction writer was into his own writing. “I wrote this book, I know it is great, I know it is the greatest book in the world.” It was a very odd experience for me because it was like taking the lid off my own mind back from the days when I used to write. No one says this out loud, but when your writing is hot and you know it, everything Jimmy the science fiction writer said at the table to Steve and to all of us in Barnes and Noble, is what every writer thinks when their writing is hot. They know they have something, they know they caught a big fish.
That first meeting was a strange meeting because Jimmy did all the talking and this was all he said. But when he left Steve turned to me and Maria and said “and this it in a nutshell, we all have to feel about our own writing exactly how Jimmy feels about his, we all have to believe this, and we all do.” And it was torture for me to hear this, but a good torture, because I knew when I had believed this, I knew the feeling. And suddenly I didn’t want it to be something in the past, ‘there was a time when Anne wrote and when she did she believed passionately in her own writing.’ I wanted that experience of doing it and believing in it to be part of my present.
I still didn’t think this or say this to myself. I was still in the mode of ‘writing is a chapter in my life in the past, and I am doing something else now, and I love what I am doing now, it fulfills me and interests me.’ And as soon as I got home from the writers meeting I changed out of my outfit for it, into my regular clothes, and went back to what I had been doing, posting on the internet, and did not miss a beat. I treated the meeting as if it had never happened. Other than thinking “Wow! for 300 bucks I could get what is in my closet into the world.” And worrying if it means I have to type it all up again because it is on huge floppy disk and nobody uses those disks anymore.
I actually don’t know how soon afterwards I went back to writing. I remember seeing Maria at the swim club the day after that meeting and she said “have you been writing?” and I said “no.” And the question amused me because back in the days when I was a writer and in a community of writers and painters, we would all ask each other “have you been writing” or “have you been painting” when we saw each other, and there would always be a crestfallen face if the answer was no, or happy face if the answer was yes. And it struck me so oddly 12 years later when the idea of writing had not crossed my mind for all these years that someone in the pool would ask “so have you been writing?” But the next time I saw Maria in the pool I asked her “have you been writing?” and she said “yes,” and I said “me too.” Within that one week writing started up again.
I had woken up one morning, brought in my cup of coffee lit up a cigarette and instead of clicking on my internet forum to post, I had clicked on email to write a story. I didn’t know where or how to write a story on my computer, I could not find a place to do it, I wrote it on email. I wrote it about the swim club and my observations there, mainly what I had observed the day before, the mothers with their young children and the two teenaged boys in the water. I had forgotten how to write a story, but I was able to describe what I observed. And every morning for the next week I went in and wrote my observations of the club the day before. And then one day I wrote the account of the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble. That was fun for me. I had not recounted an experience for a long time. It was interesting to describe what went on, and it was interesting for me to describe what it was like to be a former writer at meeting of writers. That was how I knew writing could be fun for me again, and also I had written something someone might find interesting to read.
And then soon after that I began to write the story of my visit to my mom in Walnut Creek the previous September, and then I was hooked. That was good for me to write cause first of all I wrote narrative again, I was telling a story, I had forgotten what it was like to tell a story. And also because that story went down to the bottom of my soul, it was the deepest story I had ever written. I wrote it over 3 mornings, it was a 3 part story, and I was still writing it on email. I never did fix the typos on that story and show it to anyone. It was a joy to write but I don’t want to read it, to relive the experience in reading it, even tho I loved writing it. But after I wrote that story I went to Office Depot and bought a printer, I was serious about writing again. And I also went all out to try to find a word processing program on my computer. I had returned to writing. And then I knew the sky was the limit.
And then Maria took me to that how to get published meeting at Barnes and Noble, and I listened intently to all the changes since I had left beating my head against a concrete wall. I heard about print-on-demand where you only pay 300 dollars. “It’s a real book?” I kept saying. “It has a spine? It looks like a book? It’s the same as other books?” I paid a lot of attention to that because I had accepted the obligation to get what I had written in NYC out of my closet and into the world, I wanted an easy cheap way to do that.
But of course something else took place at that meeting. It was just (Jimmy) the science fiction writer, Steve, Maria, and me. But the science fiction writer was into his own writing. “I wrote this book, I know it is great, I know it is the greatest book in the world.” It was a very odd experience for me because it was like taking the lid off my own mind back from the days when I used to write. No one says this out loud, but when your writing is hot and you know it, everything Jimmy the science fiction writer said at the table to Steve and to all of us in Barnes and Noble, is what every writer thinks when their writing is hot. They know they have something, they know they caught a big fish.
That first meeting was a strange meeting because Jimmy did all the talking and this was all he said. But when he left Steve turned to me and Maria and said “and this it in a nutshell, we all have to feel about our own writing exactly how Jimmy feels about his, we all have to believe this, and we all do.” And it was torture for me to hear this, but a good torture, because I knew when I had believed this, I knew the feeling. And suddenly I didn’t want it to be something in the past, ‘there was a time when Anne wrote and when she did she believed passionately in her own writing.’ I wanted that experience of doing it and believing in it to be part of my present.
I still didn’t think this or say this to myself. I was still in the mode of ‘writing is a chapter in my life in the past, and I am doing something else now, and I love what I am doing now, it fulfills me and interests me.’ And as soon as I got home from the writers meeting I changed out of my outfit for it, into my regular clothes, and went back to what I had been doing, posting on the internet, and did not miss a beat. I treated the meeting as if it had never happened. Other than thinking “Wow! for 300 bucks I could get what is in my closet into the world.” And worrying if it means I have to type it all up again because it is on huge floppy disk and nobody uses those disks anymore.
I actually don’t know how soon afterwards I went back to writing. I remember seeing Maria at the swim club the day after that meeting and she said “have you been writing?” and I said “no.” And the question amused me because back in the days when I was a writer and in a community of writers and painters, we would all ask each other “have you been writing” or “have you been painting” when we saw each other, and there would always be a crestfallen face if the answer was no, or happy face if the answer was yes. And it struck me so oddly 12 years later when the idea of writing had not crossed my mind for all these years that someone in the pool would ask “so have you been writing?” But the next time I saw Maria in the pool I asked her “have you been writing?” and she said “yes,” and I said “me too.” Within that one week writing started up again.
I had woken up one morning, brought in my cup of coffee lit up a cigarette and instead of clicking on my internet forum to post, I had clicked on email to write a story. I didn’t know where or how to write a story on my computer, I could not find a place to do it, I wrote it on email. I wrote it about the swim club and my observations there, mainly what I had observed the day before, the mothers with their young children and the two teenaged boys in the water. I had forgotten how to write a story, but I was able to describe what I observed. And every morning for the next week I went in and wrote my observations of the club the day before. And then one day I wrote the account of the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble. That was fun for me. I had not recounted an experience for a long time. It was interesting to describe what went on, and it was interesting for me to describe what it was like to be a former writer at meeting of writers. That was how I knew writing could be fun for me again, and also I had written something someone might find interesting to read.
And then soon after that I began to write the story of my visit to my mom in Walnut Creek the previous September, and then I was hooked. That was good for me to write cause first of all I wrote narrative again, I was telling a story, I had forgotten what it was like to tell a story. And also because that story went down to the bottom of my soul, it was the deepest story I had ever written. I wrote it over 3 mornings, it was a 3 part story, and I was still writing it on email. I never did fix the typos on that story and show it to anyone. It was a joy to write but I don’t want to read it, to relive the experience in reading it, even tho I loved writing it. But after I wrote that story I went to Office Depot and bought a printer, I was serious about writing again. And I also went all out to try to find a word processing program on my computer. I had returned to writing. And then I knew the sky was the limit.
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