a reader

My spring break is almost over and besides doing a lot of walking and reading, I haven't accomplished much. I spent about half the day yesterday crying and wondering if I should be planning my divorce. Kim has really helped. Unlike Jane, she seems more objective and able to give me some hope for my relationship with Joe. She's just less biased and more level-headed. Being able to talk to her has kept me from utterly losing it the last two days.

I've also been drinking a lot the last few days. I know that's probably not good. Joe has worked all night tonight--in fact, I even helped by inputting a lot of the info for one report for him. He's still working right now. So I'm sitting here, trying to write something, even if it's nothing good or useful.

I've signed up for a cheapy writing course that starts on Sunday or Monday. Hopefully, it will give me a jumpstart with my writing. One thing I do know about this week is that reading so much has only increased my desire to start writing again. I read one great book--The Kite Runner--one of the most affecting books I've read in many years. I found myself crying, tears streaming down my face so many times in the last 100 pages. And I'm reading another book now that is just as beautifully, though differently, written--The Secret Life of Bees. Books like these make me long to create something just as evocative and heartfelt, something that will reach out to others as well and that speaks to some inner truth we can all recognize, all possess.

My problem is and has been my lack of ideas in the last few years, my lack of stories to tell. I know it sounds lame, but it's the truth. The premise of Bees amazes me--I could never have thought of something so incredible. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. I feel like all I see these days is the obvious, the predictable.

I did have a jolt yesterday as I was reading in Bees--all my more recent ideas have been dealing with adults. but I don't really enjoy writing about adults that much. I like being in the head of a kid, of an adolescent (maybe because I still am one?) That's where I feel my strengths are, where my powers of observation are keenest. I could be just sticking with what feels comfortable, but I also think that maybe I just have an idea of what I'm good at. Also, it's what draws me. I like to read stories of people who are at that crossroads in life--there's something hopeful and despairing all at once--the idea that everything about a person is simultaneously being defined and shaped--that everything is fluid, a person is who she is and yet also who she is becoming. Maybe that's true of all of us, at every age, but it just seems more sympathetic, more visible in an adolescent. Also, there's this sense of compassion, this willingness to suspend judgement when dealing with a kid that is so often absent when we review the same choices, the same mistakes or missed opportunities, made by an adult.