Focus (For a Writer)

I needed a focus.  Thoughts drifted me away, and it felt like I was trying to cook on all four burners while things were spilling from each one even though all I was doing was driving, not cooking. 

I calmed down and realized that the drive through the Kirker Pass road on this chilly day from my home town Walnut Creek to Pittsburg was such a blessing.  Yes, blessing, and did I ever count that? 

Thank You for this scenery, thank You I can still see it.

The hills that were hay-yellow and brown last summer are velvet soft brushed with green, like an oil painting with bold, confident strokes.  The bare branches of the trees done with pen and ink sketches meticulously etched.  Occasional cherry blossoms with whisper soft pink dabbed with sponge paint, looked like a child’s art.  Then the clouds that hugged the snow-capped Mt. Diablo!  Here the Supreme artist brought her watercolor palette. 

What a magnificent decision to mix all the various media. How daring - forgetting all rules, breaking all formulas to express exactly what She wanted.

I was trying to paint that too, with words, but in vain. What I felt today in my solo driving was a sense of transcendence, a feeling of uplift that doesn’t happen often in everyday living.  I wanted to hold on to that feeling.  Stay at that moment and stretch it.  

Mind drifted away. Thoughts accumulated like dust balls and whirled in front of me. 

It started with the thought: ‘Why write another book while so many others are there?’   Then, ‘who’ll read yours?  What is your WHY?’

The quotation from the speaker Stephen Nightingale shared at the CWC meeting last Saturday shone like a light bulb. 

“Writing is a way of giving to the stranger.” 

STRANGER! Huh! Did I ever think like that?  

Yes, I can feel that is the reason I toss and turn, go through enormous pain that all endeavoring writers  (or artists) go through. I wanted to give to the stranger,  to connect. 

There is a tremendous urge to give, to share my story to a stranger who’d listen, who’d connect with my writer’s soul.  This stranger is unknown, maybe even not born yet... but that is my goal. 

There is so much noise out there regarding choosing your reader I am confused.  Heck! Do I know that?  But I hear over and over ‘Who is your audience?’.

I go from one book to another, click one link to another to get that answer.  I have a wealth of information  I gather at the end of each day but I don’t know what to do with it. 

FOCUS- says my inner voice.  Just write.