Writing Kicks

Today is a splendid day for writing. Why? Well, it's 10 degrees Fahrenheit here. Even the birds at the feeder are all fluffed up trying to keep warm. There's nothing like curling up on the sofa with a laptop and writing away. When the story flows, it's like blood flowing through your veins. Lately I've had the opportunity to learn so much. My ending was all wrong for a chapter, so I took one of my favorite books off the shelf and examined the ending of a chapter. Oh, mine had been so lackluster. So the key is to leave the reader on the edge of something, wanting more, needing to know the next sentence. I recut the ending of that chapter.

Later I will be warming up by kickboxing. I feel every writer needs an activity that gets the heart going and clears our minds out even for just a while. I don't know about you, but my mind operates at about light speed--no joke. At least it feels that way. I usually have at least 8 things to do in addition to several story lines being juggled in my brain at any one time. There are other ideas and concepts that linger on the edge waiting for me to notice. As a friend of mine frequently says, "There's always something." And since that is the case for so many of us, it is a luxury to linger on one thing--spend time with it--caressing a story with the keyboard.

I enjoy doing a lot of things, but writing kicks. It's the thing I always go back to. A writer the other day was giving me his word counts. I guess on a bad day I write 200 words, which is a page. On a great day, I can easily write over 2,000. I'll let you do the math. Sometimes I think of making jewelry or cookies or painting or playing the flute, but when push comes to shove, I'm happiest writing. At the end of all times, I want to remember all the great things I've done and people I've known and in some cases loved, but I don't want to regret that I didn't write enough. I think I'm finally writing at a rate that makes me happy.