on writing

So I published something.

I haven’t written much since. I haven’t exactly been idle, either. There’s been work, travel, family as well as the usual dishes, laundry, cooking.

But I haven’t had much to say.

There’s a lot of talk in the writing community about writing as a habit, a daily exercise. Which I think is great. For years, I have felt guilt for not having such a habit. I felt like a writing failure because I didn’t get up at 4am to do anything, much less crank out a daily quota of pages.

I do not write every day. It’s practically heresy, I know.

But here’s the thing: I still write. Sporadically. Occasionally. When I have to. When I want to.

I still think I should work on developing more of a habit, but there shouldn’t be guilt in that. My life is full and sometimes, that’s enough.

I got the biggest piece of my life published and it had nothing to do with a habit. It was because of luck, connections, and more luck. I did little to cause publication - somebody heard me speak and took a chance.

And as it happened, despite my lack of a respectable writing habit, I wrote something good, something that I was insanely proud of, something that left people awed.

I still thrill when I think about it.

My goals are to keep writing, in whatever way I can. I would like to submit a few essays to journals and contests, to see what else might be lucky. I’ve attempted to blog once a week with varying degrees of success.

I recently saw an old friend and she expressed surprise that I was still writing, all these years after college. She said mutual friends had stopped, found another calling. I almost laughed at her words, not because they were funny, but because stopping had never occurred to me. I’ll keep writing just as I keep taking showers or eating Rice Krispies: because it’s a part of me I can never do without.