(written to Ghost Story by Sting)

The homeschool day has ended and paper, pencils, books, are strewn everywhere. To be honest I am exhausted.  I am teacher, and mother, and wife, and biographer.

I crave a routine I really do.  However, I realize that I just don’t work that way.  Routines bore me quickly.  My mind craves spontaneity and laziness and hours of work, and then nothing.  It is something I need to understand within myself.

I listen to music and cry and write while sobbing.  I do that a lot.  So much of my emotion is built into my words.

I am writing a book and it is not at all like giving birth like they say. No, it isn’t at all.  No, with birth your body takes over and your mind doesn’t have to pay any attention to it.  The cells divide, the hormones are released, and the body grows and changes.  The mind can be left to its own business and worries.  It can happily dream or think about bills or watch a movie or whatever other things that plague the mind.

And the body is delighted with this. The body loves a pregnancy. It knows. It moves things in right directions.  It knows blood types and what goes where and what doesn’t cross over.  There are little slights in the formula from time to time but the process is the same.

A book, however, is the mind’s business, not the body’s and the mind is woefully behind.  The mind carries too much in it already.  Daily living, relationships, loves and losses, arguments, insecurities.  So much mess and involvement.  The mind has this in there.

So me, Amy, one writer, one insecure emotional writer shuts out the world with music but then the music makes her (me) cry and I have to stop.  The mind too will take itself off on tangents and fantasies and thoughts that make no sense.

So then the rational side steps in and reigns me back and puts me back to the screen but the dreamer wanders off again.

Until finally the two can merge together. The dreamer and the doer.   Like a wild horse with a patient rider.  They move fast together and flow.

It is way too easy to get caught up in the romance of writing without actually writing and then your kid comes in and tells you the toilet is clogged (again) and you are sitting in a room that needs cleaning, with unmade bed and dirty clothes.  And you look at the window as the sun goes down.

Writing is such a mess and sometimes not so beautiful.  Sometimes it is just messy and cruel and unforgiving.  The words don’t come and the obligations pile up and you eat an apple and just blog to get it all off your chest.

This book will take me many days and no, it is not like giving birth. Not in the least.  There is no wonderful lovemaking at the start of it and there is no joyful crying at the end of it.  A book just is, and you send it out there, and there it goes.  And it doesn’t grow up like a child. Your words are on the page and they remain there fixed and stagnant.  People like it or not, they read it or not, and you move on with your life, and that is it.