tinkering

“What was that?” asked the Muse of Many Questions.

Thalia drummed her fingers on Bird by Bird’s cover. “Ummm, Typist’s editor called it… Nia.. What did she call it?”

“A weekend.” When Typist’s fellow wordsmith first presented the idea as a suggestion, the Muse of Determination was nonplussed. Why on earth would Typist want to take a break? She and her illustrious trio had pretty much wrapped up Meandering Muses and were chomping at the bit to keep going, not unlike Henny attacking a marrow filled femur bone. And then she remembered… Typist watches the clock when Henny chews… too much of a good thing leads to indigestion.

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Hi!
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend activities. I read Bird by Bird from cover to cover, putting the tiniest dent into a stack of books that has been jumping up and down while waving at me from the shelf. The best writers read… a lot.

I just skimmed an article about why Why Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Really Hate Your Twitter Feed. The article’s author said,

So intent were these activists on making themselves efficient public mouthpieces for a cause, that they had no time to be a full human. They were ‘mere mouthpieces of a party, take away the party & they shrivel & vanish.’ They lived their lives, Emerson worried, as a means to a political end, not as something worthy of serious attention in itself.

This short little paragraph reminds me both of why I want to be the best writer I can be, as well as why pauses are important. Going forward, at least for a while, the trio and I are going to experiment with minimal work on the weekends. Perhaps like Anne Lamott, we’ll carry around index cards instead of our cell phone on those days.

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson