Preamble with Extra Sauce -- or, Justify Your Existence!

J'accuse, Wine Will Fix It!

This morning, gentle reader(s?), I open up5 Tips On How To Have A Sh*tty Year... which seemed apropos, because so far 2011 is kinda acting like I ran over its puppy. (It was an accident, 2011! I'm so sorry if I did! I'll buy you a new puppy. Let's just be friends, please?)

I sought the word from the wise on how to avoid further pissing off this year, but I got indirect inspiration instead. Because, you see, #4 grabbed me:

"I wrote voraciously for the first 20 years of my life and then I stopped for an entire decade."

Ouch. Sounds familiar.

So allow me to overexplain. Because what fun is mere explaining when you can do it with twice as many words?

This is a dragon. Made entirely of plastic spoons.
Not one of my hobbies. Yet.

Over the course of my nearly thirty years, I've grown into a Jill of many trades and master of none that come to mind. Over time, I've dabbled, and in some cases continue to dabble, in painting, drawing, piano, running, yoga, horseback riding, standup paddling, cooking, sewing, origami, shell collecting, book collecting, politics, environmentalism, astronomy... although not witchcraft. Not to say I'm good at any of this, I just like to try stuff. If I haven't tried it, it's probably simple lack of opportunity or exposure.

But if I'm actually good at anything, it's probably writing, and I may in fact be a writer deep down in my little heart. The "I have random, sometimes dumb, occasionally funny thoughts" type of writing (that, in other words, only since the advent of the blog could anyone else care about.) In middle and high school, I'd filled five or six hundred font-size-7, half-inch-margin pages. I rarely went more than a few days without firing up the Mac Performa and dutifully banging out witty reporting and analysis of the day's goings-on (this is obviously before Fox News sullied my name and reputation). Writing was always cathartic, if time-consuming, and my AP English teachers told me I had an amazing writer's voice for narratives.

Cheese it!

So why did I quit?

It wasn't conscious. Part of it is time. That thing called "spare time" slipped away after high school. And being both longwinded and an incorrigibly perfectionist editor, ya know, writing time adds up.

A lot of it is distraction. I sit down at a nice blank sheet of paper -- because there really is nothing as full of promising and lovely potential as a snowy, virgin slice of dead tree -- and I think, "I type like 3,000 words a minute. Typing would be SO much faster." So I turn on the computer, and fast forward three hours: I've read 40 news articles and been sort-of kind-of productive workwise, my eyeballs are screaming for Visine, and all the writing I've done is typing in "slate.com." It's a trap, I tells ya.

"Who? WHO could have written such a terrible script?
See my distress?"

Part of it is that having gone to a top-flight university and living near enough to the black heart of Hollywood, I know a few real, live and incredibly talented writers who've been struggling for years to get their amazing work sold. They toil in anonymity, churning out engrossing scripts and novels, and Hollywood responds to their genius by horking up BS -- I'm looking at you, "How Do You Know." So I've grown frustrated with the whole concept of writing on their behalf. There are Grand Canyons of difference between what I do and what they do, but my pathological empathy sometimes isn't that nuanced.

ANYWAY, back to Wine Will Fix It. I realized I was in the same quit-writing boat, and suddenly, all sorts of things popped into my head, begging to be written down. Or maybe aired out. And while I don't make new years' resolutions, I thought I might try this writing thing again. If nothing else, maybe it'll exorcise some demons.

Because those guys have been getting
super fat just lying around in my head
eating bonbons.