Well.
It looks like this will be my easiest place to keep a writer's diary. It won't get lost in the other bag, or used up writing grocery lists and jotted notes about errands to be done.

So the blog takes a slight turn, if all goes well, and enters a phase of more frequent and shorter notes-to-myself yet left out on the coffee table with no lock on the cover.

Today I read a short sample of a "personal response annotation essay" (whatever that is, which should become clear as mr education progresses) which nearly brought me to tears.  It did bring the lun=mp in the throat, hot behind the eyes emotion and this reaffirmed the knowledge that I'm on the right track. At Last.

It was a simple description of what a writer does before writing: the right space, the right position, the right light, the right pen, paper, whatever necessary tools and comforts (for me, a mug of tea going cold while I write) are gathered and put into play to assist the creative ... oh, that creative business, you know.

the flow.

I have called it food for the muse - and really I need to check and see if I plagiarized my muse from Stephen King and need to find a new image... the rumpled clothes, the wrinkled rug, seem Kingsian more than Lyrian. Mine should be ancient, wrinkled and dotty.

At any rate, it is clear this compulsion to creating the right environment is not some small, petty, selfish silliness of my own but is part of the identity I share with writers everywhere. It may be simply persnickety. But it may also be a way of reducing distraction by having everything the same, nothing to interrupt the flow with new attraction by unfamiliarity. Thus even the busy workplace of Le Monde provided the ex-pats a mundane familiarity through their close and daily relationship with the establishment.

For me, my attic writing room is three years old and has yet to be used for writing. So much intervened - so many detours to get here. And still here I am in the guest bedroom, not yet ready to take that twelve-step leap (the attic stairs are a dozen in number) until the paperwork clears and this anchor is fully aweigh.