as the rice cooks....

okay, I usually don't do this, entries more of my own personal blah blah blah that I just spill out like so many rice grains hitting the interior of my small AGA pot....

bubbling away right now in a healthy pat of butter, Bob's dinner in about half an hour... that, and of course, peas....

sometimes he's easy when I ask what he wants for dinner. tonight it's peas and rice. all I had to do was pin Jay down as to what flavour of bullion goes in the water. chicken. there, all done...

so, in the meantime, I'm asking a question. T. Anne got me thinking, she and several other spots that lately have been bandying around this question...

why do you write?

as the rice 'cooks' (I still have to add the water, but I've a minute or two until then...) I'll tell you, or start to you tell you in the shortest way possible (or else the rice will burn) why I write...

cause I'm called to, that's why....

okay, pretty short. and I'm not talking the flowery, springy 'oh because I've been writing since I was two and a half and it's all I live for...' sort of why I write. T. Anne's post today is about the hard, unpleasant sort of writing, what Megan Bostic made an entire video about, what J.C. talked about yesterday, the butt-kicking, bitca angsty part that's not really so swell, and no matter how fun writing is, sometimes knocking one's head against a brick wall would be more enjoyable...

still my answer's the same... because I'm called to...

sometimes it's easy, sometimes is a... real wonder that I'm still sane. like why in the WORLD would I think this is for me?

then, when I stop thinking, it (usually but not always) comes together. like using the force. just take the helmet off Luke and zap those little suckers!

for me it's a faith thing, but I also like my 'use the force' metaphor. cause really, what else am I gonna do? until some agent or editor tells me, 'hey, this is FABULOUS!!!' it's kinda like flying by the seat of my pants, and then Obi Wan tells Luke to just use the force dude...

well, he doesn't say dude, but I'd give a tenner to have heard Sir Alec Guinness say 'dude'.

and actually he did offer Mark Hamill twenty quid (scroll down a bit to see the story) to go away. allegedly...

anyways... I just use the force. sometimes I get zapped in the bum. sometimes I feel like I just blew up the Death Star. most days I just stumble along, trying not to get stepped on by a Wookie. (how in the WORLD did this degenerate into a Star Wars post???) anyways, as the rice cooks, as the world turns, and sometimes it feels like it's turning in ways I REALLY don't get, when the writing and the whole I wanna be an author-thing looks like hoo haa, how do you hang in there?

you tell me yours, and I'll spill mine... :))) (in a post that doesn't happen today, as the rice is nearly done and I really need to stir the peas...)