I thought I would try to get some writing done today. During my morning commute, I've been listening to Natalie Goldberg read her book, Writing Down the Bones. I read the book some time ago, when I was very young. Listening to her read it and comment on her own writing has been good--maybe even helpful.
Yesterday Milissa had a surgical procedure done at Newton-Wellesley hospital. It was outpatient and relatively minor, but, because of my year of medical hell, it was a difficult day. Everything turned out ok and she is doing great, but it turned up the heat on my own medical anxieties. While I was waiting for her at the hospital, I decided to write; but, just when I started cranking, her doctor called to tell me that her procedure was finished.
Now, I find that I can't easily go back to working on what I was writing yesterday. I am really concerned about things like the date I wrote on the top of the document. Yesterday, I was writing about my experience--of being in the hospital as a bystander rather than the patient--as I waited. I inserted the date (using MS Word's insert date and time feature) on the top of the page. I do that a lot. I don't know why. I always think that it is relevant and that it somehow provides some sort of authenticity, but then I become bound by that date.
Yesterday, I did not finish what I was writing as I was interruped by the end of Milissa's procedure. Today, as I tried to go back to that writing, I wasted endless amounts of time and thought trying to figure out how to add to a document that has yesterday's date on it. First, I thought I would change the color of the text that I compose today--write in blue. That, of course, adds a layer of technological irritation--how to make MS Word respond appropriately. I can change the text to blue, but it won't stay blue if I move the cursor into an already existing area of text that I want to edit. Then I become overwhelmed by the technology of writing--'hey,' I think, 'there should be a program that keeps track of the date of the writing by changing the text color. . .' I then think that there probably is such a program, maybe a journal-writing program, and that I should see if I can find it. This is the bad part of Cafes that feature free internet access (such as Espresso Royale by BU--my current writing location). I have to stop myself from going online to search for a piece of software that will solve a problem that doesn't really even exist. Who cares what date I write the text on and when did I decide that my writing had to reflect the date on which it was created? So many things stop me and most of them, if not all of them, are things created by my own mind. Goldberg talks a lot about this in her book.
I have been at Espresso Royale for over an hour and have written nothing, contributed nothing to my various writing projects. Nothing. Yeesh.
