I turned all the way back to 6.676, which was a free write based on the line, “Something moved in the distance.” I think this was a moment of clarity for me–not the blog be the result of the action to notice this blog. The inciting sentence means different things to me now than it did in the moment of creation. That structure tells me something. It tells me that a writer should revisit prompts and compare those prompts to the past inceptions. I love the idea of seeing where you were and where you are in comparison. Heck, that is what Turnback Tuesday is truly about.
That blog came as part of a week or more of free writes in which I created new things as a way to jump start my writing brain. I always need these jumpstarts and I’m grateful to be able to still create from them. I found myself (and find myself) imagining stories in dreams and in the moments of emerging consciousness and that reminds me that there are stories lurking within–moreover, it encourages me that I may still be connected to the story verse, or what Stephen King once referred to as Boo’ya Moon. I’m excited to still be a writer. Here in Paris I found myself standing at the crypts of Alexander Dumas and Voltaire and thought about the incredible legacy and opportunity and connection being a writer brings. I thought about my life and the narrowness of it, in terms of action and human connection, and I thought about the need–the desperation–for expansion.
I travel to explore and to discover just as much as I travel to escape. However, when I return from the escape the land of the lost that is home descends upon me like darkness. I need to fix that in my own routines and in my own ability to create space in my space–one that has been entirely coopted by purposefully vapid children. They cannot ruin my me-ness any longer. I will not stand for it.