1.08.2009

what are you writing now?


Someone who just finished Walk with Us asked me – what are you writing now? I gave the laugh and the answer I’ve given before: With a toddler in the house, who has time for a new baby?

But that’s just when people do have a new baby, isn’t it?

Time for a new answer – a real answer. Which is to say, time to go within. Am I using Walk with Us promotion to avoid new writing?

If you read the book you know about my habit of opening a book at random and putting my finger down, again at random, eyes closed: a sort of drivethru Oracle, but with faith that a) we already know the answer and b) what we don’t know/don’t know we know the universe wants us to know, and will find a way to tell us.

Better to journey to the center of the silence. But that “What are you writing now?” and the illogic of my answer happened as I was walking into an auditorium spottily filled with people – Quakers convened for a business meeting.

We were half way through Budget when I reached into my bag and opened the only book in it – the very same alleged toddler in question, Walk with Us. Am I, I asked, done with – released from – this book? Then I put my finger down, asking-hoping-praying for a word. A word of guidance.

The word was “baby.”

Oh. Walk with Us isn’t a toddler, not yet. It’s an infant. That’s why I wake mornings with its needs pressing on me like a full bladder. That’s why I don’t have time for a new baby. And what it needs, its milk, is readers.

So, the walk takes me here. I guess this is what I’m writing now. I guess you are who I’m writing to. For.

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