I sit on the bed, but I’m still a little uneasy. “Come on, Kaa,” I say, “you know you can do this. All the great ones have, at least once-- Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, so maybe you can, too.”
There are no dishes to wash or laundry to do. No food to prepare. No e-mail or Facebook.
I review the rules:
1. There will be no blogging.
2. There will be no academic writing.
You are here to practice creative writing.
“You can do it!” writer Kaa says enthusiastically. “Show me what you’ve got.”
What do I do? I reach beyond the Dell the size of a Bible and pick up Thunder and Lightning
and crawl into bed. “No, Kaa, don’t pick up someone else’s work. You are here to create your own.”
I don’t listen. I look for excuses: I can’t write here. This room smells. I want to go home. Where is my son? (I know doggone well where my son is.)
I call my son. I calm down, but I don’t write; I read. In the middle of a paragraph in which Goldberg tells me structure is all I need to get by, I jump from the bed and grab the Dell.
What do I write? A character sketch of a separated couple who are neighbors raising two twenty-somethings.
What will I do with it? IDK
