I promise to light a candle on writing's altar every day this month

The days are getting shorter, colder, and the trees are nearly all bare.  This kind of weather makes me a bit desperate, and restless.

That's why I'm glad that this daily "need" to write (competitive and juvenile as it is, making the writing of something a game that I can "win" at the end of the month) is pushing me to the page every day for a while.  The more I write, the more my mind unlocks a little, gets out of this vaporized, frustrated gridlock.  I hope that, like last year, my dreams become more vivid, if oddly unsettling (and sometimes gratefully escaped.) As long as I remind myself that I'm not doing it for any other reason than to do it, I should be able to keep going.

I'm still meeting the word count goal, which is nice, but I can see some rocky days ahead when, as the days get even shorter, and the nights colder, and the dog keeps pursuing her goal of taking begging to an inescapable art form, I won't want to do anything but feel as sorry for myself as I can.  Writing will seem to be a slog again, as it often is in my imagination -- like working out.  Like figuring out what to make for dinner.  Like having to read and grade a batch of essays.

Funny how things are often better in the imagination than in reality. These freeze dried, salted edamame, for instance, that I got at Target today. They looked rather interesting in the bag and tasted pretty good in my imagination, but in reality they're dull and papery. The best I can say of them is that they're a "natural" way to bring salt to my lips and don't make me feel as guilty as potato chips.  And don't even get me started on romance and its consummation ...

Writing is the opposite.  In my imagination, it looms like a chore that I will do anything in my power to avoid -- I'll even mop the kitchen floor.  In reality, however, once I get going (five minutes is sometimes all it takes) I get swept up into the experience of that alternate reality and disappear from this one.

What I'm saying is that writing is always better in reality than in imagination.  So why haven't I thrown myself on its altar every day of my waking adult life?

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Nanowrimo Day 4
Word Count:  9667