Something Scratching

11 April 2010

There's something scratching inside me like a cat wanting to go outside. I kept looking at our bookshelf and a few books whispered that they'd help open the door. The books: "Mosiac of Thought", "Why Write", "Readings for Intensive Writers" and "On Writing Well". That makes me suspect my feline is a grouping of thoughts, words that need to get out. I wish I could create a day outside of time and curl up in comfy chair and read them all.

But in this time I have I open up one of the books. Upon flipping through a suggestion jumped at me. Freewrite. Just sit down and write about anything. Anything? What would I write if I were to write about ANYTHING? Besides, I have so much I need to write about: important things. Words scripted and sculpted just so, ones that can be passed down through generations and make me look good. Or at least words that can help me remember what I've learned. But how long that takes! How painstaking! And how unlikely with a squirmy inquisitive little boy to play with.

How I want to read. And write. And read how to write better. And write to learn what I read. I have a crazy desire to open my own little school and be my own pupil learning my own curriculum. The curriculum: the things I don't know about that I want to! History of American immigration laws, how to make chicken really tasty, Winston Churchill, the story of Liberia, understand Shakespeare.

But mostly I want myself to come out on the page. I want my thoughts to open up and stamped down before they swirl around and around and away and away. I want to see what I really think. My thoughts seem to be a mystery even to me until a pen traps them. In fact, I suddenly don't know what else to write. I'm eluding myself. Better get back to that book to train my thoughts.

"Good writing rarely rolls off our fingertips onto the computer screen," he says. Well that's true. Where's the help in that? I guess I'll keep reading before this cat starts clawing the furniture. But so much to do! (Yet somehow not enough to do lately.) My insides might just have to be a scratching post for now.