Here is what is happening when a writer is not writing: instead of all of the words coming out onto a page, those words are sinking into the deepest belly, they are swimming like minuscule minnows toward each other in a little clump, they are biting off each other's heads to try to survive, they feed on each other's tails, they become a tiny festering mass of baby-mouse teeth, raggedly burrowing into their own bodies, some will fall away like iron pebbles and sink or float away like ash up into the chest, the breast, the lungs, the throat of the writer, some will work their way up into a writers brain and occasionally jump out to free themselves in tears or the foulest language or anger heaved upon loved ones like overfilled dinner plates. What happens when a writer is not writing is a slow and gnawing and ugly and bitter death. That is what happens. And no one notices it. Not even the writer. Until the death comes out in her hands, in her dreams, in her dramatic and overblown wishes for death, in her ridiculous assertion that she is worth nothing, she is nothing, she has never been anything, and not a soul in this world truly loves her. Then, if she has been lucky enough to have grown wise, she dries her tears, pulls herself out of bed, smooths out the sheets, fluffs the pillows, walks out to her kitchen, eats something wholesome, smiles at the people that love her-- remembers that they have been there all along, then sits her ass down somewhere and WRITES. She writes hard. She writes long. She writes until she is late for everything. She writes until she remembers who she is, until she reverses the pathetic carnage happening in her belly, pulls each minnow one by one, by the tail, out of her mouth, out of her eyes, out of her brain, out of her ears, places them on the table in front of her and glories in their renewed life, their innate knowledge of swimming, their slick-strange bodies who no longer feed but kiss and kiss and kiss one another and her, her hands, her lips, her cheeks, her forehead, her arms, until she is covered in gratitude, this writer, she is covered in belonging to the world, to the word, to herself. Yes.
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JodiAnn Stevensonlives, cooks, mothers, teaches, walks, runs, wuns, ralks, trains, bikes, swims, kickboxes, steps, writes, obsesses, dances, stresses, learns, karaokes, loves, zumbas and dreams big big dreams in Frankfort, Michigan and elsewhere as time, money and opportunity afford. Archives
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