Writing: Revisited

This week I finished reading three books. Sounds like an accomplishment until I tell you when I started each of them. Which I'm not going to tell you, actually, but it wasn't this week. It wasn't last week, either.

I also forced myself to stay up past my children's bedtime every single night, and even made it to my writing desk three of those nights. While I was there, I even wrote. Unlike finishing three books, this probably does not sound all that amazing, but trust me. (How I ever began this indulgent habit of going to sleep when my children do just confounds me. This is the same person who got a college degree with two kids and a full-time job. When did 8:30 become the new midnight?)

I love my writing desk. It's an antique - a gorgeous nineteenth century piece, smaller than contemporary desks, with beautiful carved legs. I can see it from my bed, and I gaze upon it daily, even on the many days that I don't visit it. Sometimes I whisper to it. Hello, pretty writing desk. What brilliant things have been penned while seated at you? What are you doing over there? Why am I so sleepy?

When I do make it to my desk, as I did three times this week, I feel official. I feel writerly. I make things up and I write them down, and I say, hey! Whaddya know! I'm writing again! It's blissful. I know who I am. Hope exists.

Then time passes - days, weeks - and finally I find myself at my desk, and I look over the writing I did last time I was there. And I just hate it. So I throw it away and start something else. Bliss. Hopefulness. Know who I am. Rinse and repeat.

I must find the key to breaking this cycle! Really, it can only be one thing. I know what the One Thing is. The One Thing is pulling myself up to that desk not three times in one week, but every day every week. I know this is possible, because long passages of my life have included daily writing. The next such long passage needs to begin now.

Tomorrow I am attending the NH Writer's Project Writer's Day Conference, an all-day affair that I signed up for about a month ago. I registered for three workshops, though I can't remember what they're called. I do remember choosing roast beef for my box lunch. I hope to come away from this conference feeling inspired, compelled to head directly to my desk and apply this inspiration to my own words. I hope to at least be able to peg the beginning of my next long life passage that includes daily writing to the Day I Went to That Conference, even if I learn nothing, and I can't believe that I will learn nothing.

At the very, very least, I hope the roast beef is good. I could always write about that, I guess.