Sunday, October 20

 It was a party weekend. Real crazy stuff, like dressing up as minions from Despicable Me. My autistic son dressed up as Gru. The granddaughters played the parts of the three little girl. Great fun. A little parade around the street with various whistles and dancing to The Monster Mash. It's a yearly tradition, if I haven't told you that already.

Tomorrow we'll be repeating another tradition, one I hope to never repeat again.
My daughter must redo her leg surgery to remove blood clots that formed even though her blood was dangerously thin. I have no idea what they think they're doing, but I have to trust that they know, that maybe I haven't had it all explained clearly. All we can do is pray.

So today I stayed busy to keep my mind off things. I ran around town collecting tables off KSL.com so we'll have a bunch of tables for our NANO write-in I host at my house every year. We're going to have a whopping crowd and most need a table to write. I'm pretty sure we've got that covered now. That will happen in Nov. 9th. If you want to join us, in the Layton, Utah area, contact me through here or my website, llmuir.weebly.com.

My daughter's dilemma aside, I will be honest and say I am scared to death.
I am afraid I will never get another word written, another word edited.
I open up a file and move my cursor into place, then I can't seem to care about what is already there--at least not enough to change it. And eventually, I click on something else. When it's time to shut my computer down for the night, I realize I did indeed open a word file that day. I save it again, even though I know that nothing changed.

And I promise myself "next time."

I don't even know if the office space will make anything different.
Yes, I plan to write at night. I've planned where I'm going to put the furniture.
I've got it all there, in my head. And I try to imagine myself bent over a keyboard, eyes glued to the screen, mind oblivious to my clever surroundings because I am working furiously to get the next project finished, then the next, and so on.

And you know what I see?
I see myself sitting at the perfectly positioned desk in the perfect amount of lamplight staring at a word document, hands frozen on a keyboard.

Is this writer's block? I don't think so. This feels more threatening than that. I've worked through writer's block enough to know there are certain things that work for me. I just follow the yellow brick road, one brick at a time.

I'm afraid my life won't let me write anymore. I'm afraid I'll never get to put my foot down and demand my writing time because writing time will pale in importance to what I need to be doing for my daughter and her daughters. Is that selfish or what?

I'm also afraid that I've become a terribly selfish person to even worry about such things at a time like this.

But here is the question.

Can we be writers and not be selfish?
Can we be proficient writers and not be selfish?

I had never been accused of being a work-a-holic until I was published. And believe me, the term work-a-holic was never a bad thing. It was always a drive, a work-ethic I lacked, or felt I lacked. So when I finally had a reason, a sound reason, and an actual drive, I felt like I was an over-night success. I'd finally found a way to work and love it.

But now, in the face of real life and real danger, it seems like I've been playing pretend, like I've been playing in an over-sized doll house and my mother has come for me, to tell me I can't play here anymore. And suddenly I realize that none of it was real--when I'd been so sure it was real!

I had another realization today to pile on top of that. I went for a walk. (No more weight lost, but none gained back, even with a couple slices of pizza this weekend.) But as I was walking around the block I realized there were some distinct smells that were actually getting through to me. (No sense of smell for years, then I got a little sense back. Any identifiable smell is a celebration!) But the thing I realized was that I was absolutely compelled to figure out the best way to describe those smells on paper so that someone reading it could smell it too.

You see? I am a writer. I can't stop from being one. But what if I never get the chance to write them all down? What if I forget? What if I never smell them again and thus, never remember what I was going to say?

You see? Terrified. Of everything.
So I'm going to record them here. At least I'm writing a blog, right? And if this is all I can do, for now, I'm going to get the words out. If I can remember...

...the spice of dying leaves...mixing with the unmistakable pungency of wood-smoke from a great distance away...a great distance because the smell was spread evenly through the air, not concentrated on my left or right, as it would be if the fire were nearby...
...there, down that road, someone was cooking...apples...the smell of them so tart and fresh when it hit my nose I could almost hear the sound biting into me...the same sound I make biting into one of them...

Don't forget my Lyndsi in your prayers...