A Schedule: Days 5 , 6 and 7

Thursday, June 3: About 2 p.m. I plop down into a place at home I don't normally write in, and write prose for two hours. I realize I do need to change places now and then, and that I require a computer that boots quickly, because once I am ready to write I'm impatient to start.

Friday, June 4: Half the day, great pleasure. Cheered by lunch with writer friend at a groovy new venue. Errands and exercise are joyful. Differences threaten another friendship. I try hard to tell myself it's not my problem, to distract myself, to cage and tame my feelings, to put it in perspective next to the Gulf oil spill. But I'm overwhelmed and I don't write. Up much of the night reading Puddn'Head Wilson.

Saturday, June 5: St. Louis Writers Guild holds a poetry-writing workshop outdoors at the Botanical Garden, 10 a.m. to noon. About 20 people met, heard some poems, then separated and each went off to sit alone and write, and then met again to hear the results of our exercise. Interesting and entertaining. It is an exercise in hope.

I have found a rigid writing schedule to be intimidating, and it is not for me at this time. But trying to adapt to it, I assembled and sent out a chapbook, wrote some prose and some poetry, mailed out some poems, and astonished myself by registering for a course that is waaaay out of my comfort zone: Adult Beginner Ballet.

22 Poems in Two Days

The notebook exercise, done the past two Fridays, yielded first drafts of 22 poems (!!!!). There were more but I chose to transcribe only those. Got my crafting and editing work cut out for me for probably the rest of '09. So nice to have something on paper.

Fill a Notebook in a Day

Get a one-subject notebook. Clear a day so it’s nice and quiet. Then write in the notebook all day. Draft like crazy. Try to fill the notebook in just one day. Write what you want without censoring. This ain’t for publication. See what you come up with.

I finally got around to doing this favorite exercise (in a Hello Kitty notebook). It always unearths what I’m really interested in writing about, which gets buried under “should” and “ought to,” red herrings, and imagined obligations. A friend says: “You have the problems that you want to have.” When I think of writing as a problem, I have made my own problem, haven’t I?

I invented this exercise in creative profligacy when I was 12 and a notebook cost me most of a week’s allowance. I imagined growing up and the joy of being able to buy and fill all the notebooks I wanted.