Summer 2019 Six Word Biography

Got Bigger. Getting Smaller. Still Thankful.

The Ray Bradbury Challenge

So what I do now is hang out, fully awake in the middle of the night because well, that's what women of my age do.  And in doing such I found a new podcast, the Ray Bradbury Challenge.  As the name suggests, it is an attempt to do something that Ray Bradbury suggested, to write 52 short stories a year apparently because it's "hard to write 52 bad short stories".  There is a poetry to it, a certain deep belief in the ability of hard working individuals to finally come into flower.

Reading and Writing is Fundamental

There are some guidelines I want to lay out before I begin, but I do want to begin and my stories, putrid, inferior and defective as they may be, will live here, because this was the blog was where I was the most creative, the most decidedly dedicated to writing.

More later.

http://www.literaryroadhouse.com/introducing-the-bradbury-challenge-ep-1/
http://52shortstories.com

A little happiness

When I get up at 4 am...the thing about it is, I'd like after I am done with being up to go back to bed. My cats and dogs do it all the time. They have an epiphany, rise themselves, lick some portion of their bodies, walk or run around as is necessary for the moment then in some near future time deemed appropriate, they settle back into slumber. I've always thought how convenient that was.

For humans, at least for this human, at this stage of her life, it's the death knell for sleep once one has turned on the light. After writing for an hour or so, I'm very satisfied and deliciously drowsy. I can think of nothing more satisfying than sinking back into my side of the bed and sliding the covers over my head. But I am faced with one of two scenarios:

• Two hours after four, it's six a.m and I have to begin preparing to go to work. I work a nine hour shift with a short break for lunch so I can pretty much bank on being completely exhausted by the time I get home.
• On the weekend or other days off, my partner awakes at six and comes downstairs like the pied piper, a trail of hungry animals behind her. If I go back to bed I feel guilty about leaving her to do all that feeding and caretaking.

So the upshot is that I don't usually anymore rise before 5:30. There's just no profit in it. Except today, here I am.

Perhaps it's the odd spring shift in the atmosphere I'm picking up but I just could not stay in bed. I'm currently sedately reading Annie Dilliard's "The Writing Life" and I'm keen to digest another chapter. It's such a toothsome read that find myself going through it slowly, savoring it's potency as culinary student would tasting a virtuoso tart made by a master pastry chef. Said student carefully discerns the elegant flavor profiles of the icing , the fine notes of the filling, the delicate browning of the crust before synthesizing the entire mouthful in one heady chew. Eating becomes a dual process of evaluation and ecstasy.

Suffice to say, I adore her writing, so much so that I sit here after a short reading session, inspired to write about it in the imprudent hours of the morning.

It's such a small thing, this rush of inspiration but having it, feeling it, detailing it here makes me very emotional...it's been such a long time since I felt this way.