On recommendation of one of the members of the "new writing group" I got a copy of

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Having shaken the notion embedded in me brain that it was an autobiography of Charlie Parker, and figured out that it was another one of those "writers on writing" books, of which so far my repertoire consists of Stephen King's On Writing (which I heartily recommend, it's the only thing of King's I've read). I like her style, it's breezy if a trifle adolescent in its studied flippancy, and so far it appears to be an affectation to hide the fact that there's serious cogitation underlying the verbal vaudeville. All of which is a perfect fit for me, it's what I'm trying to perfect. The introduction fit my 30-minute treadmill workout perfectly; it's on the kindle and will be my workout accompaniment for as long as it lasts.

So the second meeting of the new group* last night; first "critique" meeting, where

four of us actually put "skin in the game" to use one of my favorite phrases. Of the eight of us, two were entirely new faces, six had been at the "organizational meeting" two weeks ago. After heroic efforts on the part of the Organizer failed to find a completely appropriate venue (library, for example) we met at a local Panera, who seemed not to mind us sitting there for two hours for the price of a couple of coffees. As long as there were no paying customers standing waiting I guess it's ok - works to their advantage to be seen to have groups of people using the place. It ain't Deux Magots, but I guess ya takes whatcha can get. An interesting, disparate bunch of folks, with some interestingly divergent views on writing (the process as well as the product). A promising endeavor, so far. So watch this space...

* This is Writing Group number 3 for me, number two in terms of active groups; the previous "number two" fizzled out, though one or two of the folks from it have shown up in this new one. When I mentioned to a pal that I had joined another writing group, he asked, "What's wrong with the other one?" Well, nothing or course, but if one is good, two will be twice as good. I guess I should have asked why he bothers to play golf at more than one club.

There's got to be a trick, a knack to this discipline stuff, this

making one's self sit down every day and work at the thing we want to do (to have done?) more than anything, but which eludes us and engenders no end of excuses. And even as we mouth the excuses we (I) know they're bullshit and the real answer is buried somewhere in the murk of the mind, possibly, probably out of reach of the waking search. Fortunately, I have convinced myself that it is real, and it is the right thing to be doing, and it is a worthwhile - indeed perhaps THE worthwhile - endeavor of a lifetime, else why would it be so persistent and not have gone away after all these years of neglect and diversion? "Perhaps you're just not a writer" someone said to me once. I sincerely tried to follow through on that notion, and several times got on the wagon, ignoring things I'd written up to that point, and trying to be comfortable with not writing anything more except in conjunction with business - tech writing, emails, etc. Well it didn't work, and it sort of felt like I imagine it would have felt like in the old days, being left-handed and suffering the corrections of a culture that saw fit to make left-handed people into inept and uncomfortable right-handed people. So the past few years have been a bit of a struggle but I persevere and sooner rather than later now (though it's already too late for it to be really "sooner rather than later") the pile of stuff produced will be a respectable corpus.

Dream Journal 6/4/2013 - So it's been since April I haven't posted. Shame on me.

Twice in the past week or so I've had a similar dream, or sequence of dreams. I'm on some sort of campus, with many buildings of differing ages and architectures, and apparently differing functions. There are lots of other people around but they do not seem to be aware of me, or at least not concerned with my existence. They also don't seem to be engaged in any communal or concerted effort - they all seem to be to-ing and fro-ing on their own individual agendas (what's the Latin plural for a plural?). The thing about this "campus" - a word I choose solely because it describes a plot of land with a clump or cluster of related buildings, not because I think the nature of the place was academic, though it might well have been, I never did really identify the place to myself - the thing about it was that the buildings seemed to have been sort of strewn higgledy-piggledy around the landscape of the place, with little or no attention to connections between and among the buildings. And their relative positions kept changing, or else (worse yet) the buildings themselves kept changing, and when I left one and passed by others, then had to return to the one I'd left, there was no way to find it. Neat quadrangles (there's that academia connection) turned into rock-strewn paths through the woods; then the rock-strewn paths turned into steep downhill paths, still among rocky outcrops. Buildings were placed randomly among seemingly derelict patches of woods and trees. In no case could I return to where I'd started, and someone was waiting there for me; not sure who nor what for, but it was important to my dreaming self, and it was the driver of the dream - getting back. And it couldn't be done, "back" seemed either no longer to exist, or else it had moved, or else it had shifted shape so as to be unrecognizable.

There wasn't any water in this dream though. But it was disconcerting to my dreaming self.