Thursday, January 26, 2012

A Dull But Happy Girl


All work. No play.

That's me. That's been my January. 

I swear, I feel like a freshly reamed orange.

I noticed how squeezed out I've been feeling when I went onto Twitter this morning. Normally I like to play on the Twitters before I get down to work each day, but the last few weeks, I got hardly nothing to say. I mean, I used to be good for the occasional witticism or trenchant observation on today’s most pressing issues, but lately my tweet stream is, like, a double helping of duh.

I hope this is actually a good sign. Annie Dillard says in The Writing Life that writers have this tendency to come up with ideas and want to save them for later. We think we can imagine something--a character, a turn of phrase, whatever it might be--and put it in the literary larder for future use. But, no, she says we should use it up now. Today. Don’t save it. Put it down on the page. Use yourself and all your ideas up and then make some more. 

So I hope that’s what I’ve been doing. Using my ideas up and anything that could conceivably be considered a leftover. I'm well aware that Twitter has and will continue to carry on perfectly well without me.  

Can I just say that I love times like these?

And you? How’s your winter hibernation proceeding?