The Right Place
December 29, 2001
8:22 a.m.
We spent the last couple days visiting the folks, and my brother in Louisville. To the delight of everyone around, Jeff--who makes his home in balmy Los Angeles--was accompanied by Karen, his lovely fiancée whose only real weakness from my point of view is her suspect judgement in choice of husbands. [Just joking, Jeff. Ha-he]. We ate well, did the presents thing with both Lisa's parents and mine. I saw Tim Brown, a good college friend who I'm truly jealous of as he packs up and heads down south to watch the Cards face the BYU Cougars in the Liberty bowl. Life is weird, you know? It just kind of goes along and goes along, and then you stop and look around and see things are really pretty okay.   Worked on the book a bit more this morning. Good progress. I'll admit it's been hard to keep my focus with all the holiday stuff going on. I hoped I would be further, but then I always hope that. Still, I like what I've gotten done, and I wouldn't make any different choices. I note Steve Leigh talked about his difficulty in finding a starting place with his last book. The problems I was having at the beginning of this third draft mimic that situation. I really struggled for several days while getting into the new stuff, and a big part of that was finding the right place to start. While we were talking the other day, Tim Brown asked me what I do for writer's block. Actually he asked me about writer's cramp, but since he's an Industrial Engineer rather than a Mechanical, we all give him a little leeway. Lisa said I don't believe in writer's block, which I don't really. And I said that I wake up early in the morning, and I write. I do that all the time. Sometimes the words come out fine, and others they don't. But if you're creating words, you can't have writer's block. So there, huh? It's more complicated, of course. Sometimes you write and write and pour your heart out, and it's still all crap. This happens--among other times--when you start at the wrong place. When you're writing at the wrong place, things are dull. The words just kind of sit there like lumps of watered down clay that you're spooning around on the page. But when you start at the right place, everything kind of takes off. Right places have pulses. I should close this entry by saying that being in Louisville this week was one of those right places. It had a pulse--slow and steady, strong. Comfortable like a summer evening on the porch. So I'm working again. As always. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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 Collins Clan, with Aunt To-Be |
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