ON WHY I BOTHER DOING THIS AT ALL...

Okay - I stumbled upon this blog of mine again today and see that it is indeed viable when I thought for months it was not - so, what to do now? I don't really understand the purpose of blogging for someone like me - I mean is it worthwhile? Is it just a waste of time? Time that would be better spent doing some actual writing, or could this be construed as actual writing? I think it was Natalie Goldman or one of the other writing gurus who said that any writing, even just keeping the pen to the paper and letting rip (or presumably, the fingers on the keys, in the case of those who prefer the computer at times - as I tend to) - any writing, is of value; that it is the doing that is important, not so much the quality, nor the quantity really, but the doing of it. I guess she means that if you get something down and keep at it, you'll eventually start making sense or getting something you want down. Maybe it's akin to priming to pump, or what I always think of as priming the pump. I remember when I was a kid and on the island with Mom and Dad - we didn't have running water there but we did have well-water. However, to get the water to come up in the pump sometimes, I remember you had to pump the handle several times, to "prime" it, and I think sometimes, you even had to pour water down the well - sort of to wet it, maybe remind it what it felt like to be wet maybe? I don't know...I could be wrong - I don't have a really clear memory - just something vague.

        I've spent most of today trying to learn to load the digital picture frame that Katy and Scott gave me for my birthday. My kids seem determined to pull me kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Last year it was the iPod nano for music - this year, the picture thingie...ah sigh. I haven't got my shredder up and running yet - maybe later.

         For the first time in a long time, I'm reading a book I can't seem to pull myself away from - "The Hour I First Believed" - Wally Lamb's 600 plus page tomb - is really something. He's had me in tears more than once. I love an author than can take real events, especially tragic ones - in this case the Columbine school shootings - and frame a fictional story around them, trying to make sense of the whole thing. Jodi Picoult does similar things but fictionalizing the whole business. Lamb is actually using the events as they happened with the people who were killed and the people who did the killing - it's absolutely fascinating to relive that time from the vantage point of a fictional person who might have lived through that horrible time...especially in the hands of such a master. It took him almost ten years to write this - I admire such perseverance - is that even a word? I mean, of course, such stick-to-it-tiveness, and I know that's not a word but that's definitely what I mean. Enough of this for now - I'm going to get back to reading that book right now. Later fellow bloggers.