Oh Book of Alchemy… how do I love thee? Let me count the ways?

The fact that you challenge me to see myself and all my bad habits that keep me from writing.

Just one more level…I keep telling myself. Oh, the amount of gardens I have restored in Gardenscapes. The many chaotic messes I’ve cleaned in jewel coloring or arrow cube shooting or hole eating. I restore order. I create balance. I avoid the hell out of my writing because I don’t know what to write about.

Bull crap. I know exactly what to write about. I can write about my day ( been there, done that). I can work on, edit, rewrite sections of Polishing the Bones (but it feels so overwhelming….). Or I can finally finish Homeleaving (but it’s just a mess and you’re going to have rewrite the whole damn thing anyway so why do all that work on a failed rough draft?)

So I tuck myself into my indoor comfy chair or perch my dirty feet on my grubby white porch railing and play just one more level that becomes several hours of wasted time. But it’s good wasted time. My mental health meter is high and full and my chaotic levels are all organized and my mind is happy and numb and I’m not writing crap on a page.

Of course that page is blank….too….

DAMN IT!

I keep promising myself and my TJ Eckleberg eyes that I’m going to finish Homeleaving this month. And I don’t. Because I’m uncomfortable with the manuscript. It is just one big stop and start and I don’t like writing that way but damn it if I don’t finish writing a first draft I’m never going to finish writing a first draft because in order for there to be a second draft I have to have a first draft which won’t happen so long as I am stuck in this gerbil wheel.

So what keeps me from writing? Comfort. Which is absurd because when I’m in the middle of a poem that’s working or in a scene that’s flowing and the words just rush out of me then I’m absolutely within my element. But the shuddering stop-start, like a novice driver trying to find the friction point in a manual transmission car. That is hell.

So I have confessed to what keeps me from living my perfect life.

What is my perfect life? My perfect gameplay loop that will help me find satisfaction?

I think back to an article I read about Anne Tyler. How she wakes up and spends the morning writing in journals or freewriting while sipping on tea or coffee. Or maybe she’s drinking whiskey that she’s disguised as tea. And then, in the afternoon, it’s serious writing. Pages and pages of a draft that must be magical and amazing.

That is the life I want. To wake up and sip my coffee and settle behind my computer or have a talk-to-text dictation app that will actually listen to me and make sense of what my popcorn brain is stimming so I can walk the dogs and “write” at the same time. I want to sit on my porch and write (and lose weight if I’m being honest because writing is so damn exhausting and yet it doesn’t burn calories…).

I want to sit in my office and write. Or sit on a boulder at Black Rock Summit and write. Or sit in my car while the rain pounds the roof and write. And I’d like to work with a classroom of students who want to learn how to write and are dedicated to the craft and I want to work with a collection of peers who are dedicated to the craft and we can workshop and I can learn.

I want to learn. About life. About the world and history. I want to learn about astronomy and birds and habitats and culture and artwork. I want to understand geometry and do math problems in my head so that when I write about a math teacher I’m not worried that I’m just going to sound like a massive idiot.

And I want to write about everything that I have learned. Just hours and hours with a computer or a journal and hands that never ache and pens that never write funky or feel skritchy when the tip strokes across the paper’s fibers.

That is my gameplay. Curiosity fed so I can fuel the curiosity of others. And do it with a bit of grace and flair.

Just one more level…..