The Joy of Writing

Calling yourself a writer is a conceit that should, most likely, be left to those who can say, honestly, that they have a publisher. But that would seriously diminish the ranks of writers. And that would diminish the world. That's why I sometimes ignore the conceit and whisper "I am a writer". Generally that happens only in the dark, pre-dawn hours, when I alone am awake and I've just deleted all of the drivel I've written over the last few hours. Only once I've said it aloud can I start anew. To call yourself a writer, even if only to yourself, requires only reading and writing. Reading is the important part, writing is the hard part. Being a writer is a lot like being a chicken. Likely most of us can conjure up an image of a chicken in a barnyard constantly pecking at the ground, ingesting pebbles, sand, dust, straw, and, every so often, a seed. At some point the slow accumulation of those rare seeds results in Chicken Cordon Bleu. And sometimes a dry, tasteless, mass that makes your throat constrict and your face to twist uncontrollably. Writing is like that for me. Nothing that resembles a sentence goes unread. Sometimes I read back the last few hours work and kind of nod a little bit. It will need to be polished, re-jigged, and sharpened, but it will work. And then there are times when the delete key is the only way forward.

When it come to that I sometimes hop over to Wordle to get an inkling how what I've written is progressing. So the image represents  the progress to date of my most recent novella-in-progress. And now to work. Again.