Day 19

2:00 or 3:00 a.m

Monday is rolling in.  I just cleaned the refrigerator, made blueberry pudding, watched Call The Midwife (PBSP online, read the first chapter of Gift From The Sea, and organized my painted papers so that they are ready, after I go back to sleep and wake up again at a reasonable time.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh had five children and a husband; she went to live alone for two weeks in a cabin by the sea.  During those two weeks, meditating on seashells that washed up, she wrote a tiny little book that became a best seller.

She didn't write it to create a best seller.  She wrote it because she had something to say that reflected what she had discovered was shared by all women of the time, how to balance simplicity and productivity. She most likely wasn't concerned about whether critics liked it or if people even bought it.  I wonder if she even imagined that people today would still be buying and reading this book.

So I wondered: why don't I write a book?  I have two weeks, probably way longer, in my own house, by myself, if I just stop frittering away time cleaning and organizing and watching movies.  What about you?

No pressure, just a suggestion.  A short book.  Focused on what we've gleaned from this time of solitude and separation.  Poems, a play, an extended essay or memoir, which is what Gift From the Sea is.

Pick the time of day that's your best writing time and save phone calls for later until you have your first chapter.  That's what I'm going to do.

9:52

Productivity is so much a part of how I measure my days.  Keeping up with the dirt and mess that settles around me.  Checking things off my list.

The lack of goals makes me feel lost at sea.

So I've picked one of the many blank books in my house and made a list of things to accomplish, starting today and ending when I finish. "Write a book" is on the list.

I have absolutely no interest at this point in whether what I write is pleasing, publishable,  literary or sellable.  Those are minor aspects of this project and none of my business.

A little book.  I little tiny book even.  I challenge you, my writer friends, to give it a go.