Today is the sort of day


when I find I am asking myself "Why do I live in the northeast?"
cold, wet, windy, grey, barren looking.
And today is the sort of day when I can provide no sufficient answer to that question.
I was born here, is all I can come up with at the moment, and really, as I have legs for walking, and a car for driving (and a bike too if it comes to that), that reason doesn't seem quite good enough.

Just went and got wreath off of door, as wind was intending to carry it off, and leave it as a gift in some neighbor's yard.

oh well, back to writing

I have been working with something like a step outline, but for the current section I am working on, there isn't much down already, so I feel uneasy as each word, each idea, feels new and untested. I know what is over the hill and down the lane, I know what to expect when I will be at that place several (thousand) Wednesdays from now, but I don't know what is around the very next corner. There is a lot of uncharted territory between today and that day, and my map seems horribly vague. I know a lot of you like that, being explorers, the excitement of discovery, the unknown. But I like my map. I like knowing where the gas stations, lodging, and restaurants are. I like knowing what sort of views and activities to expect. I still find plenty of spontaneous moments, and discovery, tucked into my framework. Plus my framework style is to wait, till I am told, so instead of tedious plotting, it is more just waiting as/till unexpected scenes and sections fall into my lap. And then when I have enough of them, I lay them end to end, and feel I have a story beginning to end. But of course I am not told everything, no some of it I have to work out, figure out, for myself, and that is when I get nervous, that is when I have to go off map, and have no idea what I am doing, and it feels like I may just be making things up. And what if I am making the wrong things up? Face to face with thousands of decisions needing to be made, I cower in uncertainty.

That said

I am surprised to be finding out that I am much calmer when making the attempt, than I am when avoiding it.
So that is helpful. I have to just keep telling myself that, reminding myself that, that is true.