“Stay Drunk on Writing" Ray Bradbury

I’m baaack! Here is my blackout log.

Day one of the blackout. Since I am still using my phone I see numbers in red next to my Facebook app icon that tell me I HAVE ALERTS. It’s a bit like having Christmas presents under the tree. I want to know what’s in them, but I have to wait a week.

Okay, there are no more dispatches because I didn’t write any. I found I didn’t really get much more writing done during my enforced blackout. Various reasons: work, grading papers, social life, and overall, other things I let distract me. What did my partial blackout teach me? I can’t blame my unproductiveness on Facebook. It’s MY fault.
Here it is National Poetry Month and I have yet to write a poem. Lots of lines that might be found in poems, or possible titles, but no poems.
But I digress.
Is it possible for someone who is ADD to write? Yes, but it takes discipline and motivation, and, hey, that cloud looks like a giant blue fish.
Oh yeah, writing.
I am re reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen in The Art of Writing because I may use it as summer reading text for my AP class. I had been having my kids read On Writing by Stephen King, but I like to mix things up. When one teaches a long time it’s best to change things so as not to get bored. Anyway, I have been writing down some lovely tidbits. He asks,” What does writing teach us?”
“… it reminds us we are alive ….and writing is survival.” He reminds us “while art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.” What Bradbury confirms is that writing reminds us we are alive, and as humans each story has importance because it IS the human story. YOUR (seemingly) benign life is a magnificent tale, and if you have the gift of storytelling or word crafting, it is your responsibility to do so because “not to write, for many of us, is to die.”
Exercise:
Find an old picture of yourself and write an ode about the event surrounding the picture, the people in the picture with you, or what happened right after the photo was taken.

Here is the beginning of an ode I am working on:
Ode to Other People’s Clothes

When I see her wearing my castoff clothing
I feel momentary giver’s remorse.
The black leather jacket that once hugged
My body two sizes and several years ago.


Happy Writing.