Is it just me, or do some of you guys out there have a hard time getting started? And by getting started, I mean the part where you roll up your sleeves and actually dive into the work.

I have a hell of time doing this. For some reason, I like to mess around a little - okay, sometimes a lot - before actually writing. Take this morning for example. I turned on the computer, checked my email (only four of which needed responding to), checked my spam mail (because you never know), and then logged on to the yahoo website to check the weather. (We do have a potential snowstorm coming off the coast tomorrow.) Then I noticed a blurb about Michelle Obama talking about her daughters weight, so I clicked on that and watched the entire piece from the Today show. (It was over 10 minutes and frankly, not that interesting, but I do love that woman.) Now I am writing on my blog.

I do this sort of thing - more or less - every morning, with one eye on the clock. Nine is when I like to actually start the work, especially since I only have five hours after that before my daughter’s bus comes home from school. Sometimes I manage to do it. Other mornings I don’t. And I always feel so guilty about it - this seemingly aimless drifting through cyberspace - this “putzing around” as the people here in the valley like to call it.

Last night, though, I was reading something about the magnificent J.D. Salinger (who recently just died.) He said that it took him a good amount of time every morning to get started on his books, because it took him “at least an hour  just to take all his disguises off.” I thought about that for a long, long time after reading it. And aside from feeling comforted by the fact that one of my all-time favorite authors in the entire world may have done a little putzing of his own every morning, I couldn’t help but wonder if this stalling that I do did in fact have something to do with removing these so-called disguises.

Maybe my mother disguise had to be put aside this morning as I watched Mrs. Obama talk about her own girls, my sister disguise next as I responded to an email from my younger sibling, and so on. Maybe all of these things, all of these faces that we wear, have to be removed, forgotten about for awhile as we begin the work, until the only thing left is the heart. The voice. The eyes and ears, which we can use then to write as cleanly - and putz-free - as possible.

What do you think?

Onward, always.

CG

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 7:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.