OMG girl, where have you been?

The truth is, I've been scared to write.

Lately I've spent a lot of time looking back at all my old stuff, grimacing, wondering how I could ever have thought any of it was any good at all. It's purple! It's self-important! It's predictable! All I've had for myself is a panoply of distaste.

But today I had lunch with a friend, actually an ex-lover. We sat in the sunshine and conversed in the way that only ex-lovers can converse -- sweet, ranging, full of recognition. She asked me if I've been writing and I said I hadn't, that I'd been stuck in self-critique. Snap out of it, she told me, you're a great writer. Just start writing again, so you get the hang of it.

It reminds me of being in high school at the always-dramatic Young Writer's Retreats, which took place every year up in Lake Arrowhead or some such place. Watch what happens when you get 100 high school students from L.A. with a penchant for angst together for four days of writing instruction! A pot-fueled hook-up fest, that's what. But I digress.

I'm reminded of something that one of the teachers said to us, one morning in that big bright lodge. She read to us from an essay that was actually entitled "Shitty First Drafts." Oh, were we titillated! But she pressed on because the message was important. "Don't think, write," she read. I remember feeling distinctly giddy upon hearing this, and I remember the way it affected my writing immediately: I was suddenly liberated to just put words down on the page now and worry later about how they looked, sounded or tasted. Just find your big block of stone first, and then you can carve it into whatever fanciful shape you choose. Amazing! There's no room for self-critique in such an approach; it's actually against the rules.

So I've decided to start a practice for myself of writing in this blog at least once a week. To prime the pump, keep the wheels greased, make sure the ol' hamster is running in the wheel. You know? Keep the words flowing out of the chute. And stop fretting so much about how the words land on the page, that the chute breaks down for six months at a time. Keep 'em coming.

So that's what I'm doing! That's my commitment. So please expect to hear from me a lot more often, and perhaps in more experimental forms. And if you don't, please feel free to come check on me, and even nag me a little (but only a little) if I'm gone too long. Deal? Thanks.