Stop, drop, and write --

http://thegypsymama.com/ by way of http://grannysu.blogspot.com/

has suggested writing for 5 minutes without thinking, or editing what you write. I seldom think and write at the same time, so this should be easy. Come to think of it, I seldom speak and think at the same time, either, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Time: 7:57

A few days back, I found an old journal, nothing new in that -- dig under any pile of books around here and one of my or my kid's old journals is bound to fall out and beg to be at least scanned. Cleaning house is a chore only because there are so many words between the clutter and mess and the sweet feeling of clean floors and dressed out tables.

But what I was saying, this old journal I found, it was one I used for timed writings. It was back about 1998 or so and I had just finished reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones or one of her others. I'd read Wild Mind about 1995 and picked up the habit of ten minute timed writings. Write fast, write whatever comes to mind, find a scene and write it.

In these words in the journal, I kept going back and back again to younger days. But I also wrote what was going on right then. And those are the ones that shine. Present tense. It's the difference between growing old and going young. To live full of life, you have to be where you are. Oh -- but I love going back. And back and back.

I hear the rain when I was ten so much louder than I hear the rain that is falling right now outside our window. That's a trick time plays on us, I suppose. I'll do these timed writing on Friday, while I wait for Hearthfire time, each week. Maybe I'll make it a ten-minute write-in, instead of five.

Keep your hand going, Natalie says,
Don't think, Natalie says,
Don't cross out, Natlaie says.
She also said to write in longhand, and there is something -- something in that so different than this.

It's 8:05 --