“I’m not a writer I just drink a lot about it.” -Dessa, “Mineshaft”

I feel two invisible hands on my back, pushing me to publish and get some content on this blog. I hear a voice whispering to me, “you call yourself a writer and you have no material?”

It is silly. My blog is a voluntary endeavor. There is no editor looking over my shoulder, no unfulfilled promise of daily content, and no one really pining to read it. It is also not like I have not been writing. It is more that everything remains a draft, somehow not quite ripe enough to fall into the world. I was recently invited to contribute to a group blog, an invitation that I cherished, but I have yet to contribute a word. Those drafts are equally unready to see the cold glow of someone’s monitor. Also, when I am living enough life to have something to say, I tend to have less time to document it. It should be that way. The reason I write is because I enjoy writing. I am not performing for any audience, though I am delighted and grateful that somehow I have one.

There is a tension between the push for output and the creative process. I struggle with that. The internet moves so quickly, and wordsmithing is so slow. It should be, art is not hasty. Well, I am hesitant to point at all these 1′s and 0′s and declare it art. Blogs are pieces of a story teller, put out there for everyone to read. My husband told me that he thinks the next great American novel is going to be someone’s blog. That we are reading stories now, as they happen, as they exist, or as someone is willing to share and give them away for free. I think it is unlikely that English students of the 2050s will be reading blogs the way we read The Grapes of Wrath, but he does have a point in how story-telling is changing.

Oh, hey, what do you know?  I have content!