write stuff

Teaching can be pretty tough, and October can be a hard month. I have developed a number of coping devices, most of them starting with vodka and ending with 'ini,' but some are less damaging to my liver and reputation. Like writing - as long as I've been able to grip a crayon in my left hand (well before that grip grew accustomed to the stem of a wineglass and my fingers learned how to pluck out 80 wpm), words have been my friends. They are my promoters, my bodyguards, my confidantes even.

I have coloring pages proudly signed in a scrawl of capitals & lower case letters, picture books clearly & legally identified as mine, clever handwritten stories from 6th grade, rejected poetry from 11th grade creative writing, and a secret drawer filled with embarrassing revelations in the form of junior high, high school, and even college journals. I think I am physically incapable of stopping myself from putting every thought & feeling into words, much to the chagrin of many former boyfriends.

Writing makes my brain feel alive. I will craft poems and blog posts as I drift off to sleep, sometimes scribbling them down but often waking to find them still lodged in my semi-consciousness; I'll edit, revise, and perfect as I shower then push those words out of my head & into a document as soon as I step out of the water.

Nothing feels real until I shape it on paper, whether real parchment or a blank screen.

My favorite quote when teaching writing is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Poetry is the right words in the right order.

I think I get the right words in the right order sometimes; I know things feel less hard when I've done some writing. And my liver doesn't suffer a bit from the trials.

It's NaBloPoMo. Watch me write every day for a month. Or start drinking more heavily.