Procrastination

The trouble with writing on a computer is that there is too much easy distraction.

When you hole up in a room with pen and paper, or even a typewriter you don't have little temptation to peek at whats happening on facebook, or check email, or look at sports scores at the touch of a button.

Now that's not saying I can't just go in the other room and start writing, but I have a couple things to look at first...

Blank Page

White
A blank page or canvas
...So many possibilities

~Sunday in the Park with George


There is something magical about the physical act of writing.  The perfect pen weight, a smooth page, crisp black ink, an ultra fine point.  The idea that children today will no longer be taught handwriting is infinitely sad.  This just cannot be replicated by the tick tick tick of the keyboard and he glow of the screen.

While paper may seem temporary and fragile when faced with fire or water, the fragility of electronic data has cost me more than any decay.  Subversive texts can be secreted away and shared in back-rooms, the cloud can be censored and shut down at the whim of a few sufficiently powerful governments or corporations.

I Can't Write

I can't write.

For as long as I can remember I saw myself as a writer, even if it wasn't going to be my primary occupation.  I don't know when it happened really, but somehow gradually I stopped writing.  I think it may be that the only thing in my adult life I have written is my father's obituary.

I have always been my father's daughter.  He was an author, and that's what I was going to be too.  I wrote and wrote in elementary school, then in middle school and then in high school.  It's like a piece of my identity is missing.

So here I sit to see if I can find some scrap of something worth saying.  And just like each day before, as my fingers touch the keyboard, nothing.