It's the movement I like. I feel that if I can keep my feet moving and my body tilting forward in air long enough, other parts of my life will follow suit and I'll move out of my lull. It's not good to be a ship stuck in still water, no wind in the sails.
Looking back through papers I wrote while I was at Cal State LA, I realize how far my writing's come. It's one of the things I like so much about the creative process. I once had a young journalism professor of mine tell me in college that my class's work inspired her to be a better writer and that her writing was constantly evolving. I wonder if Edward Robert Hughes or Albert Bierstadt or William Hogarth felt that way about their painting.
I read through these papers and I see little things I would change--an altered word or phrase there, a grammatical mistake here. And I realize, as I did then, after coming home from Paris, the trip I wanted so badly, the one I dreamed of for years, the one that didn't happen--that I wanted to be a writer. I'd known that for a few months. Now, in a time in my life where I am feeling creatively blocked, having no new ideas or pitches, not having my voice heard, I look back on these papers and see all that I've done since. I was merely a student then. I've been published in four periodicals since. I was a Senior writer for one of them, a paid freelancer for three, and made the front page feature of a major city paper.
Onward!--I say to myself. It'll happen again.
Until then I must follow suit and keep moving, as Tom Petty says "...I dig you baby but I've got to keep movin'/ on...gotta keep movin' on"
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