A Further Note on Writers and Writing

My blog post yesterday prompted a bedtime discussion with Warren. As we settled in for the night, my dear husband asked "what do you want to write?" My response was immediate: I reeled off a blog post I want to do about a specific Bess Streeter Aldrich story.

Warren said, "I didn't ask that question. I asked what do you want to write?"

I made another attempt at an answer, listing several blog topics I have scrawled on a piece of paper on my desk.

Nope, same question. Another try by me to answer it and yet another repetition of the question.

If Warren had been cross-examining me in court, my counsel would have been on his or her feet at that point, claiming "asked and answered," and the objection would have been sustained. I didn't raise the objection there in the dark, but I did point out that if we were in court, I would be asking him to rephrase the question because I didn't understand what he was asking.

Warren thought a moment, then asked whether I had some project out there - "something else" besides blogs. He sees my blogging as musical etudes, short studies. Not that there is anything wrong with etudes, he hastily added, unless I was writing only etudes when I wanted to be writing a concerto or symphony.

Oh! Now I got the question. And my answer was: I. Don't. Know.

I like writing etudes. I love writing etudes. I don't know if I have a concerto or a symphony or a sonata inside me. (I do have a box full of letters written by my late mother-in-law from Europe in 1944 when she was there as a Red Cross volunteer and there may be a book in there, but I don't know that and I haven't even read my way through them yet. And that would be Ellen's book perhaps more than my book.)

But regardless of whether I have something "bigger" inside me, I'm not even writing my etudes right now. And that is what I was writing about yesterday.

I'm not even writing my etudes.

A comment on yesterday's post from my good friend Jackie at Embracing My Blessings reinforced my feeling that I need to learn to respect my writing and the time it takes. She said "it always seems like you write about things I've been thinking about. This very topic of making time to write has been in the forefront of my mind lately. I say I want to write (other than my blog) yet I find myself writing about how I decorate my house on my blog instead of putting pen to paper and writing about what I really want to focus on…Thanks for the food for thought." I emailed her this morning my observations above, ending by saying "I think I have just written have a blog post here!"

And apparently I did.