The Writing Process

      Every time, I look for a picture, try to figure out a topic, and begin to write.  What kind of writer am I anyway?  An inconsistent writer in many ways, I’m certain.  But even when I’m not actively writing a story or a book or this blog,  I’m doing some sort of prewriting.  My argument is that everything I do when I’m not writing is prewriting.  All of the avoiding, whether hanging out on social network sites, or wandering over the internet, or connecting and reconnecting with friends, or visiting or avoiding my children, or writing in my journal, or watching television, or taking a walk, or going to the movies, or meditating, or doing chores, or avoiding chores, or just plain thinking, or thinking wrapped in colors and nuances of language; all of this is prewriting.  For when I sit down to write in this blog, I look for a picture I took, try to figure out a topic, and then I begin to write.  Where will this writing take me when I begin?  Where will it end?

        Undulating hills, painted in drollops of green, folds of brown, peppered crevasses, two houses hidden in where’s Waldo fashion, a finger pointed, but not in accusation, at the white flowers that sway on the wind.  You go, she said.  Write poetry and prose and don’t stop, she said. I found the note where I did not expect the note and when I found it a smile crossed my lips, a smile settled in my heart.  I’ll write, I answered in my mind.  I’ll write poetry.  I’ll write prose.  I’ll write fiction and non fiction, essay and opinion.  I’ll write all the time when I am not in prewrite mode.  I will not stop.  Like the undulating hills and the crevasses and the where’s Waldo houses.  I will live with the mystery.  I am a writer.