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Your Optimistic Pedicure

I used to write a lot of poetry. 25 years ago, poetry was my expression of choice. I even thought someday I might grow up to be -- a POET. Gasp. The catch was I didn't like to show anyone my poetry and I refused to read it out loud. "If I wanted to be someone who stood on a stage and PERFORMED, I'd be an ACTOR," I insisted, not understanding the nature of either profession but being too afraid of everything to stop and examine myself for one hot second. I did all my writing in notebooks (but not expensive ones, I was too broke for that) and then typed it up on my word processor, which was within the Eight-In-One suite of Office Tools that came with our PC, purchased in 198something. Dad let me take the computer when I moved out, which was really generous of him considering he didn't want me to move out in the first place. Eight-In-One also had seven other tools but I didn't use them. Just the word processor. Then I would print out my poems because they looke
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Intro

I attended a "Writing Non-Fiction" workshop with Ivan Coyote  two weeks ago. It was a quick but very inspirational two hours, full of laughter and great stories. I felt adrenalized when I left, like I had few new tricks. It's weird how writing is so much about tricking ourselves into actually doing it. Yes, I believe there are people who are completely motivated all the time to do all the writing and celebrate it while they are doing it and then do some more, but there are more of us, I think, who will clean their houses better than they've ever done rather than slog on with that dumb chapter four. At one point Ivan was telling a story about staying motivated and working on your own stuff when you also write less exciting stuff as paid work. The finer points of the story escape me but the crux was not to see your own writing as more work, ugh, how dreadful, but as a reward for finishing your paid work. I am done the essay about the best water parks in Vancouver no
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