Blogging...

I'm not really sure why I'm here except that my friend Ronnie told me a few years ago, "Blog! You must blog! You have a blogging voice."

I didn't quite know how to take that. After all, I'd never read a blog...and still haven't. And this thing called "voice." What is that anyway? It's that esoteric thing editors at conferences always refer to in the seminar entitled, "What I'm looking for in a manuscript." So I figured, "What the heck! I'll blog. Maybe then I can put my finger on that voice thing." Besides, who am I to argue with Ronnie.

I mean really it's not like I can't fit it in between setting up my website, writing for my local paper, putting out eHow articles in rapid succession, figuring out how to most efficiently use Twitter, responding to my Facebook friends and wondering if I should just nix my MySpace page since that seems to have died along with the rock bands that made it what it is today. Oh, yeah. And doling out feeding after feeding for my ten year old and his friend who seem to have dedicated spring break solely to storing up on their food intake.

Somewhere in there, there's the rewrite. Pretty much have to work on that after the world goes to sleep if I'd like to do it without constant interruption, which as a beginner, seems to be what I require. Mostly, I just make myself sick with procrastination looking for the perfect time and space to work on my novel. Anne Lamott speaks to this in Bird to Bird. Should probably go back and read that part again.

I titled this blog "Writing Matters" because that's what I like to write about--things that matter and this takes my concentration, solitude and a hairband to keep my hair completely off my face. Not sure why that helps, but I swear it does. Obviously there's the word play (matters about writing) which is what I obsess on the rest of the time, intellectually feeding on each writing magazine that comes my way and book after book on writing.

So here we are. I feel as if I started my diary, written in it without self-editing and thrown it on the dinner table for the family to read. Only, who reads this? Does anybody read it? Is that why I write it? Probably not.