Madeleine Figures It Out

We were away. That's why I have not posted on the Mildred in such a long time. It was something I meant to do before going on vacation, but I kept putting it off and then I was gone and without my computer and in a remote place where Internet access was spotty at best. So, yes, I delayed and delayed and didn't do it and then felt guilty about it.

"Just like your writing process, Madeleine!" Right, readers? See, I always know what you are thinking...

Anyway, the vacation was great and I feel reinvigorated. We drove far and hiked a lot. I read an interview recently with some writer, a Brit, who said that whenever she gets stuck/blocked/foggy-headed she goes for a long walk, and usually, by the end of her walk (it was definitely a lady writer, and definitely not a poet) she has worked through the block, figured out where the story/play/novel needs to go next. That's what happened to me on this trip. Before I left, I was frustrated with Story #2, lost in it, lost in my process, and beginning to think that Story #2, the hardest story I have ever had to write ever, was actually two stories. (A psychic once told me that the voices were telling her that some story I was writing at the time was really supposed to be two separate stories; I thought Story #2 was that story.)

While I didn't write on my trip (though, of course, I did bring all my notebooks and notes and guilt), I thought a lot about Story #2 and the other stories and hiking around the shores of Lake Superior and driving on the country roads up there and no Internet access and little news and no political blogs (that, I think, is key) cleared my head and helped me work out some of the problems of Story #2. And now I am ready to go on.

I would like to finish Story #2 in mid-August, before Mercury goes into retrograde (is that how you say it?). I can do it; readers, hold me to it.

Also, it's NOT true that Story #2 is the hardest story I have ever written ever--Story #1 and another story I wrote two years ago were much harder to write--so why do I want to insist that Story #2 is the hardest ever?