the pool

In spite of getting geared up to apply for graduate school, writing as been hard. Neither the writing for the MousEye project (which I’m dreadfully behind on) or my own writing (which has been nonexistent) has been going anywhere. In Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story (which I just finished listening to on audiobook), he talks about the word pool, the language pool, the myth pool, where we all go down to drink and cast our nets. I was looking through some old writing last night, especially my thick manuscript of The Roof of the Sky, and I got to thinking how easy it used to be to find that place where the words and ideas would come. Now, because of any number of factors, I have trouble finding it. And I think it’s probably because, frankly, I thinking about writing more than I’m writing. I mean, even now, this minute, on this windy August night, sitting on my futon with my feet up on my grandfather’s old Navy trunk, I’m writing about writing instead of just writing.

It used to be easy. Now it’s hard. But the pool is out there, through the brambles, over the hedges, somewhere silent in the night, the water at its shores lapping against the finest sand, the soft noise of its existence there to be heard if I could just get my mind silent and still for a moment.