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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Where I Write - But I won't hesitate no more, no more

1980

The Rumpus has a series titled Where I Write that I fell in instant love with because, like some people enjoy knowing baseball stats or follow Iron Chef, I get a spiritual zing from reading about the writing habits of writers.

The writer and illustrator Erika Marks, on whose blog I lurk but rarely, if ever, comment, mentioned the Where I Write series and the next day I got my love note from Stephen Elliott and he had a link to Chloe Caldwell's Where I Write and I took the hint.

Sucked. In. I read every word, slowly, the way I do. I savor the words like my favorite cheap, milk chocolate. I may be pretentious a thousand ways to Sunday, but not about chocolate, yo. Dove. Milk. Thanks.

The series got me to thinking about all the places I've written and where I write. Because what isn't all about me ultimately?

Up there in that photo where I am swinging hot in the pink velour and tan that I would later regret because of those fine lines and wrinkles Paul Hewitt warned me about, I wrote long hand with whatever pen my mother had "accidentally carried home" from the courthouse where she was the County Recorder. In that photo, I was fourteen and writing a horror novel that I (jump back!) never finished. One of my characters was killed when the hood of the car he was repairing came down on his head.

I still have the story somewhere in a box.

That was the summer of The Shining. I saw it at the cinema in Florence, Kentucky, with my boyfriend David. He was eighteen and had already graduated high school and had ditched college even though he'd left high school early and gotten into a really good school in Madison, Indiana. He was back in Rising Sun working at the IGA. He was my older sister's age and I thought he was amazing. He knew everything about Led Zeppelin and just about everything else as far as my fourteen year old mind was concerned. He was a great kisser.

If you enlarge the photo, you can see his enormous class ring on my finger. I had to wrap it with yarn to make it stay on my finger. David gave me my first and only diamond ring, too. He and his father went to Texas and he returned with a promise ring for me. My mother had a fit. I was too young for things to move so fast, she said. I cried and screamed that she'd just have to get used to it. I was in love.

In that photo, I was still a virgin, but not for long. As that summer of angst-ridden teenage poetry and Stephen King modeled horror fiction came to a close, we rode up to the top of the hill charmingly called The Devil's Triangle. David parked his GMC truck just like he had so many times as we kissed and made out and gotten close, but not quite. The air was still and the night peepers made their rhythmic sounds. David leaned over me and opened the door and I climbed out. He followed me to the back of the truck where we kissed until I stared up at the ceiling of the camper shell and bit my lip to keep from yelping.

I went home that night and lay next to the same wallpaper the Brady girls had in their room. I wrote in my diary using code that I'd lost my virginity. I didn't want my sister to read it and rat me out or tease me. I put the diary under my pillow and cried myself to sleep. That was not what I expected it to be like.

Some lessons are never learned. Catch and release is one that I'm particularly slow to pick up on. I get caught and released and it takes my slow mind a while to register that I was once again the quarry, the prey, the too easily snared prize.

Some prize.

I learned about broken promises. It wasn't long before David asked for his promise ring back. There were some things I could never get back. I never did apologize to my mother for being such a stupid girl. She never said she told me so.

I stopped writing and got busy being a kid again.

2008

In 2003, my husband and I uprooted our children from the Midwest and plunked them down in Georgia. This desk came with us from Illinois in a truck that we loaded ourselves on a day when we didn't even know where we'd be living when we got below the Mason-Dixon. We up and moved and figured we'd find a place when we got there.

Some people have a higher tolerance for risk than others. I don't say that with any pride. It's just a statement of fact.

Between the years 1987, when I met my husband and 2003, I didn't write so much. I journaled a bit. I once wrote a list of reasons why my husband had to get a new job. He was working ridiculous hours and I was lonely in a city I didn't know. He refused to look for anything new so I decided I'd be less lonely if we had a baby. I wrote a little in my journal while I was pregnant with our first child Chloe, but not as much as I wish I had. On the one hand, that's a good thing because I had big ideas about how I would raise my child. To have those things written somewhere would be a great source of embarrassment now that I know what this parenting gig is really like.

On the other hand, I'm kind of jealous of today's crop of mom bloggers who chronicle the whole journey from being a woman to being a mother, too, on their blogs. But then I think about how my kids are past the really time consuming, hands-on parenting and I'm less jealous and looking forward to really enjoying them as they grow into adults. Yes, I'm still that naive.

I did outline a story idea back in the mid 1990s. I got this wild hair about what would happen if our government did forced quarantines for people with HIV. The main character was separated from her family when she was mistakenly reported by a doctor's office to have tested positive for HIV. The story hinged on the nightmare she'd have trying to get out of what was essentially a lepers' colony for people with HIV. It seems so dated now.

In 2006, I started writing again in earnest. Except I called it blogging. I wrote first and foremost about politics because I felt so isolated from all the liberals here in our little conservative hell. We weren't in blue Illinois anymore, Barack. Blogging opened up a whole new world for me. I was suddenly writing and reading and creating and communicating with artists, writers, poets, and people from all walks of life who shared at least one overlapping feature - the need to connect and put their thoughts out there.

I tried to create a Venn Diagram of the blogospheres I inhabited, but gave up. All I knew was that all the writing that had been pent up while I got on with the daily life of work and the traveling that entailed and being a wife, and raising children and obsessively keeping house came pouring out of my fingertips and filled the screen with more than it should have in some cases.

In the spring of 2007, I became inappropriately involved with one of my blog readers and my writing took a new direction. So did Where I Write. Before I didn't care that MathMan could see over my shoulder as I sat at the old Chicago Public School teacher's desk (using the same laptop I now use). As my secret life blotted out my real life (in my head, there's Before and After) I no longer wanted a shoulder surfer reading what may have made his eyeballs burn as I plunged the metaphorical knife into our marriage's back.

At the same time, he knew. I mean, he knew the whole time because we had an agreement, but when I said those words "I love him, I don't love you" everything we thought we knew screeched to a halt. The insouciance of our agreement slipped out the door during the pregnant pause.

I wrote fast and furious now. Politics. Erotica. Love notes. Poetry. Short stories. Satire. Anything that popped into my head. Being bad was good for my writing mojo. It may have not been good for my writing, but I was writing, if you know what I mean.

I was put into a much deserved lock down. My husband wasn't going to let me go that easily. I continued to write, but now we stayed close. Tethered. We faced each other across the oak table. We dismantled our marriage over the screens of our back to back laptops. We stared each other down, pushed the silent treatment, searched the other's face for something, anything. We swiped at tears when the other wasn't looking. Yelled, cursed. Laughed even at the absurdity of it all.

He didn't have to see the words on my monitor anymore - he knew the truth. I was leaving. The tighter he held me, the harder I pulled to get away. In some ways, I was already gone.

I wrote my way through the entire ordeal. I created a new blog titled Unglued for the express purpose of writing my way through the shattering of our lives. My husband blogged, too. Sometimes we communicated best by reading what the other had to say. It was a toss up to see who was my most avid reader - my husband, my lover or his wife. Sickness. I still feel sick when I think about it.

It was this time three years ago that it all came to a head. The irony is almost too much to bear. Then, I sent out a single resume and cover letter and got a single interview in Manhattan that lead to a job offer. Now, well, you know how it goes - I send out resumes and cover letters and ........nothing.

When I returned from my Gotham folly, my husband held me close, but this time to let me know I was safe. I was broken - broken hearted and raped. Literally. The man from whom I rented a room drugged and raped me. I made Madame Bovary jokes and figured I'd received my karmic due. I scrambled to pull my head out of my ass and my heart off my sleeve. I found a new job in Georgia and hit the restart button. Again. People needed me to be present.

My husband and I rearranged our writing spaces again because I now had to share a computer with the kids part of the time. The battery on this machine had given out. I sat with my screen exposed again and didn't worry what anyone might see. After all that, there wasn't much left to hide. We became careful and tender with each other. Our bruises were connected under the skin.

Everyone went to therapy.

I turned the story of what happened into several short stories. While we burned bright, my lover helped me develop an idea that was first given to me by my son. That's the manuscript I'm so desperate to finish now. I started working on it and finished the first draft in 2010. In that draft, my lover had a place as a character. During revisions, he's been removed and that's for the best. The story is better this way. The story of 2007 - 2009 stands alone and I work on it sometimes, too. But it's like picking at a scab. Time heals. Every day I'm a little closer to being able to work on it without it taking a toll on my mental health.

It's not just the pain of rejection or the rape that makes that story still a tender scar. It's guilt. The far reaching effects of the decisions I made during that time haunt me still. They probably always will. But like doing time, the longer we go without any disaster - real disaster - befalling us because of something I did or didn't do, the less fretful I am. The prison sentence of memory passes with each day.

April is a month of change. It was this day in 2008 when I sat in an Elephant & Castle at what would be one of my last dinners with my employers. I already knew what was coming. I'd seen it in his eyes two days before  as we sat in my little white car and said our goodbyes in a McDonald's parking lot somewhere on the Island of Manhattan. It wasn't supposed to be goodbye. It was until - soon. When we would start our new life and be together forever.

His nervous energy filled the car. I was confident that I'd gotten the job. I wasn't supposed to see him while I was there for my interview. We'd had another difficulty and I'd sworn I was done with the games. I made promises to my husband that I broke. He didn't want me to go to New York and he definitely didn't want me to see my lover while I was there. He knew that however bad our relationship had gotten, my relationship with my lover was worse - toxic. I didn't care. Everything was coming apart and I wasn't about to start playing by some set of moral rules now. I'd come too far. I'd gone too far.

He kissed me, placed his hand on my cheek and looked for a long time into my eyes before looking away. I touched his wedding ring. That had been one of his promises to someone else. He doesn't wear it anymore. Not that it matters to me now. On that day, it was windy and cool. He left the car and pulled the wool hat down over his ears. He'd lost weight and grown a beard. We joked that he resembled the President of Iran, the guy whose name I can pronounce but not spell. I pulled out of the parking lot and drove toward the Holland Tunnel, my beacon, the gateway in and out of the city that would be my next home. He walked with his head down, his hands jammed in the pockets of his heavy coat. I ignored the feeling I got when he looked at me as I drove by.

I had lunch with a friend and then, amid the stereotypical horn honking and cars jammed bumper to bumper as you would expect on a Friday afternoon, my cell phone rang. I got the job offer. I was perfect for it. When could I start? I called my lover before I called my husband because I assumed one would be elated and the other would not. I needed to share my elation with someone. As horns honked all over Manhattan, I dialed the phone number that had become tattooed on my heart.

"I got the job!"

I don't remember the details of the conversation except that he said something like Okay, well, now I have some decisions to make. 

The horns stopped honking. To fill the silence, I uttered a bunch of you're sures and sought confirmation that I should take the job and give notice to my employers. I was going to be with them for the next three days so the timing was right. The new job was anxious for an answer from me.

Yes. Yes. I just need to sort out the timing of everything that comes next. We were on the precipice of big changes.

His fear became an entity that rode shotgun as I drove the New Jersey Turnpike to D.C. I was to attend meetings for my current job. While his fear hummed to itself, I listened to my favorite distraction - old time radio shows and tried to ignore the growing weight next to me. At some point, I had to stop for gas and a pee. When I returned to the car, His Fear finally spoke.

What decision does he have to make? You've done everything he asked. And ask yourself this - if he's ready to jump, why did he take such great pains to hide your visit from his wife? Why didn't you notice that before?

Inappropriate as ever, I laughed at the idea. Watching him go over himself for evidence of marital foul play before he left my hotel room was like watching a C.S.I. team.

It was true. I'd done everything my lover had asked. I'd wrecked my family. I'd found a new job. I'd made plans to move to New York to be with him. I'd given notice at my current job. I'd listened to his promises of a new, exciting life. I'd kept my end of the bargain and now I sat and watched people drinking and laughing and fought my nausea in a faux English pub. My cellphone buzzed in my pocket and I excused myself to an empty booth on the other side of the restaurant.

He was staying with his wife. He had to fulfill his promise to her.

"You're sure about this?"

"Yes."

Later someone told me that I walked from the Elephant and Castle holding my hands against my chest like I was having a heart attack. It wasn't that - I was trying to keep the scream that was about to explode from me buried. Had I let it creep up my throat and out of my mouth, it would have shattered all the glasses of beer and wine littering the tables with a visual metaphor for my life at that moment. I was smashed and a smasher.

A year later, my family moved from our home into a rental. The bank was out of patience with us. When I quit my job and the Manhattan situation turned to shit, the financial dominoes began to tumble. Click. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclicklick faster and faster until there was nothing left to do but walk away.

Yes, I wrote my way through that, too.

2011

This is where I write today. Since we've been in this house, I've had several different writing places. First my husband and I replicated our old desk set up with the back to back laptops on the oak library table. Then our son moved to the basement and I took over his room, sitting back at the Chicago teacher's desk once again and sharing the space with the weight bench and elliptical which shamed me every day for not climbing aboard while I thought through story ideas.

I attended a writers' workshop with Lauretta Hannon. I surrounded myself with a Dream Board and artwork by Susan Mills. I reconnected with old friends and lovers and put some closure on other old wounds. I wrote those stories, too. My former reader/lover and I continued to circle each other like animals on high alert. Forbidden fruit. Poison. A snake in the new Eden. All these dreams and nightmares became stories. I showed him some of what I'd written. He was complimentary, but I don't think he cared much for it when I subtracted his character from the novel manuscript.

Now I am a journalist reporting the facts as best I can. Or maybe I'll fictionalize that time. It's a great love story. Twisted yes, doomed, of course, but the highs were......oh so high. Like every other big event in my life, I want to keep the memory, no matter how jagged a pill it is. It's a narcissistic quality, but there it is.

I started to think of myself as a writer. I got more comfortable talking about writing. I lost my job and suddenly, writing took on a new dimension - a career?

Sometime last year, my son and I switched places again and I took a spot in the basement, sitting at a silver Ikea table. That lasted until it got cold. I can't type well with cold fingers.

The secretary is from my inlaw's house. I don't know how old it is, but it survived the Chicago Flood of 1987. I need to remember to oil the wood more often. It's as cluttered as ever. For a neat freak in all other aspects of her life, I sure can mess up a desk.

This desk was on the other side of the bedroom for about three months while I worked on my abandoned manuscript about a guy making a run for the Senate. I moved it because my chair was in the path to the bathroom and having people banging into the back of my chair on their way to the potty or to check their teeth in the mirror drove me insane.

Now those same people feel the same urgency to get on the other side of the room to look out the window, root through the closet or sit in my now permanent fixture of the reading lawn chair in the corner. I wonder sometimes if it's my magnetic quality that draws them toward me. Or is it a desire to see if I'm still here mentally, emotionally, physically? They want to keep me from breaking any more promises to them. To myself.

I like the space. I like the little niche it is. I like that I can hear what's going on in other parts of the house without leaving my spot. I can write and stay present when necessary. I like it that I can turn my head and see the big pin oak that dominates the backyard. The rotating roster of birds hopping on the branches and calling out makes me feel less alone and it gives me and the cats something to talk about when I need a break from the cadence of fingers on keys.

I know I'm breaking that rule that says it's a bad idea to work in your bedroom, but then I never was much for rules........



Show us where you write. And don't tell me you don't write just because you blog, but don't write stories. You write. Yes, you. If you do this, come back and let me know in comments so I can link to you, okay?

32 comments:

  1. Wow. No kidding this time .... The de-tuned humor and up-tick pathos was riveting.

    To answer your question, I've gone through several stages. Once it was a yellow tablet, ink pen and anywhere. I wrote two woodworking books, bunches of magazine articles and video scripts ... all on desktop Macs wherever there was space. Then, at a desk I made. Now its always at a keyboard located in my art studio/sort of office.

    This is being written on an iPad while sitting on a sofa.

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  2. I always enjoy reading your blog. Your writing is so genuine, warts and all, and your sense of humor is wicked. Keep writing, you were meant to write.

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  3. Very brave and beautiful writing Lisa. You have gone through the fire and come out whole if slightly wounded. Such is our life is it not? Do not forget the hardest thing we ever have to do in this life is to forgive ourselves. Please show yourself some mercy. And keep writing because you are talented.

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  4. Normally I would try to think of some clever, witty thing to say that would be a poor attempt at humor. Not this time.

    This is probably one of the best ones I've read. Now forgive me while I wipe a tear from my eye.

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  5. Yeah, what the hell, you're not supposed to defuse bad wallpaper snark before it's even conjured up.

    Stop writing such fucking good stuff, you're making us look bad.

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  6. Lisa,

    I am proud and honored to call you my friend. The brutal truth with which you wrote this, the honesty...I am without words.

    Have you heard the Melissa Etheridge song, "Romeo"? If not, you must listen to it. It ran through my head this entire time.

    You brave and crazy woman. Wow.

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  7. This was remarkable writing.

    You've led quite an interesting life! (I could never figure out what you were doing in Georgia.)

    These days I make notes either on the current MacBook or whatever piece of paper is handy. This has not led to organized essays, as you could tell from my blog. I used to require narrow-ruled notebooks and fine-tip ball-points, fountains, or felt-tips, but I don't see much narrow-ruled paper these days, and I don't like the other stuff.

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  8. After that amazing (and amazingly written) story, my writing niche sounds so banal. You are, as always, brave and fascinating. The real deal.

    I avoid the "office" (a pretty spot in the basement) because I like to be in the centre of stuff and still outside of it. Where do I write? On the family room couch, at the dining room table, sprawled on my bed. I don't know how, but it works. As long as I am wired in (mentally) and relatively comfy, with my arms bent at a 90 degree angle.
    B

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  9. We first met during those crazy days. My first co-post on 'p-tits' was the day a major tornado had swept through your neighborhood but I hadn't known because I was on the west coast and never read the news back then. I was relieved to hear from a mutual friend you were all okay and was able to reassure your audience. You've been popular and well-loved for a long time. You grow more dear each day. Lovely post.

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  10. "I wrote fast and furious now. Politics. Erotica. Love notes. Poetry. Short stories. Satire. Anything that popped into my head. Being bad was good for my writing mojo. It may have not been good for my writing, but I was writing, if you know what I mean."

    Yes! Yes, I DO know EXACTLY what you mean.

    PS; I'm with Randal

    "Stop writing such fucking good stuff, you're making the rest of us look bad."

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  11. Oh, snap:

    Show us where you write.

    Where do I write?

    In my tiny purple bedroom, as seen here:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/meleahrebeccah/2087303855/in/set-72157594485584582/

    *And HERE at my local Country Club:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/meleahrebeccah/4255390596/in/set-72157623009781817

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  12. ya know, kiddo.... I still don't know how you can write so 'personal"

    I have so much luggage......I can only consider it in my sleep..... so day the kids will unpack my notes... and say WTF.... and I kinda like the fact that I will be leaving them a story..... no on knew.

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  13. Amazing post, Lisa. Your honesty is breathtaking.

    I couldn't do that. I've been blogging for over a year now and in that time have produced around 150,000 words ... seen that way, a bookful. But the autobiographical honesty and clarity which you regularly show here ... I dunno, maybe we Europeans are more reticent.

    I call what I do "Essays," the form has something of an alibi function; I pick a theme and in writing it often expose a bit of myself, a little of my history. Show and tell ... but not everything, certainly not everything.

    I bought a netbook around nine months ago and do almost all my writing on that - even though I also have a better computer with a 21" screen on my desk in the office corner of the living room. The netbook came because I do quite a lot of night shifts, which mean sitting around with little to do. So I write ... like now, at 2 a.m.

    The weird thing is, even when I'm at home, I find myself generally sitting in my favourite armchair, writing on the netbook, the main computer switched on but functioning basically as a radio. Mostly because I've got something I'm working on on this computer and I couldn't be bothered moving it to the other. Christ, is that laziness! - all I need to do is send myself an e-mail, put the current posts I'm working on as an attachment and there they are. 90 seconds and I've secured the file as well.

    I hardly ever do it. You (I) get used to working on one machine and I don't feel comfortable on any other one. And it's small and light enough (with decent battery life) to use anywhere. I wrote an essay a few months ago on a flight between Germany and Ireland and felt like I was pretending to be a busy businessman.

    I'm still circling around some of the heavy autobiographical stuff. There's the story of the break-up of my last serious relationship after nearly ten years, three years ago, for example; a story involving my partner developing paranoid schizophrenia, me having to have her committed twice, she attacking me with a knife and kicking down doors, fantasies about a paedophile ring threatening her because she knew and a final flip in her feelings for me from love/trust to cold acid hatred.

    I need to find a handle for that one ...

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  14. Oh, wow. This took my breath away, even though I remember reading some of it.

    Hugs and love to you and yours!

    [I will think and write about where I write...soon...]

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  15. well, you are one courageous lady the way you put it out there like you do ... the pain will make you a better artist, be it with words or paint, it is the same in my mind.... and your writing has gotten better, not that i am anyone to judge but it seems more crisp and pulled together... anyway, you sure do tell a good story no matter what you're writing about! xoxoxox to you, my dear. apologies i have not been around much lately.

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  16. I'm not answering your questions. I just wanted to thank you for that up-close glimpse of what you went through. I admit I was curious about some details.

    Thank you for putting yourself out there so completely.

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  17. I'm de-lurking for a second to comment. As Bill said - Wow.

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  18. Bill – Thank you. That is high praise from you. I love how your writing medium reflects the changing times.

    Lisa – Thank you. I really appreciate that. I will keep writing. I’m not sure I could stop now

    Liberality – Thank you. The fire has been of my own making in most respects. I’m learning to forgive myself, but it’s not easy.

    Latka – You know I always enjoy your comments. Thanks, my friend.

    Randal – I can see yesterday’s Purple Nurple wasn’t enough for you. Oy, that wallpaper. It drove my sister crazy which was such a delight to me. I was a rotten little sister. Still am.

    Lyra - Thank you for that. Brave and crazy? Half right! The Romeo song is very fitting, isn’t it?

    D. – Thank you. Yes, we’re definitely out of place. We originally came here for my job, but it turns out that the move proved to be better for MathMan’s career. And what? You can’t find college-ruled paper? Can I send you some? I’m serious.

    Barbara – Thanks. We’re all the real deal, I think. And you are NOT banal. Ever. I hear you on avoiding the “office.” There’s something about being comfy without rules and shoulds dominating the situation.

    I thought of you, susan, when I wrote this. Because of your art, obviously, but also because of that wonderful, whimsical drawing you made of me leaving town with my DCup stuffed suitcase. It still makes me laugh which is a huge considering what a crazy time it was. And whenever that tornado day comes up, I think of the communication trail and how we all stay connected and you went online to let people know via the blog that we were okay. That’s a perfect illustration of the beauty of this technology. Thanks for being there then and now.

    Meleah – your purple room is so pretty! And what it is about writers and angst and being bad? Thank you for sharing those photos. I forgot that you also write at your country club. You’re a celebrity there!

    Jim – I won’t attribute my ability to write “personal” to anything high-minded. I’m just working with the material I have. I mean, if I’m going to do these bone-headed things, I may as well mine the material. I know it’s not for everyone, but I like how you’re laying your own trail of breadcrumbs for someone to find the real you someday.

    Wow, Francis. If you want to share those stories, but have privacy concerns, why not write under a pen name? I know that telling such personal stories isn’t easy or possible for everyone. To tell you the truth, they aren’t easy for me to write no matter how often I do it. But you’ve got interesting, unique stories. I hope some day you’ll apply your amazing writing skills to them.

    Rennratt – Thank you. I look forward to seeing what you do with this idea.

    Thank you, Linda. I’m glad that the work I’m putting into my writing is showing. It’s a craft like any other and I can do it well or I can do it sloppily. I’m trying to do it well more often than not. It’s a process. I hope you’re feeling better and able to make your own art. xoxo

    Some Goofy Woman - Hey, you. You’re welcome. I know we’ve traveled some ground together. I hope this helps you understand where I’m coming from. It’s been that long, strange trip. Would I change anything?

    Hi, Janet. Thank you. I’m glad you delurked. It’s good to hear from you!

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  19. Correction. "No Souvenirs" by Melissa Etheridge.

    Back to you...

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  20. I write, but I don't write like you, girl! Nicely done.

    Since I've been riding the train most days now I come up with great stories, but am having trouble getting them onto paper. Or into laptop. Thanks for giving me a little shove on that.

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  21. Compelling...this reminded me of Chloe's piece, actually.

    I was about to say I write in the bedroom, too, since that's where my desk is, but that's rarely true. I write in coffee shops, libraries, the dining room, airports. Rarely at my actual desk.

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  22. Wow. That's one hell of a story, beautifully told.

    As for me, I write in an unmade bed. Please don't make me show you.

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  23. Oh, great. I seem to have misunderstood.

    You want me to write a blog post about where I write. DUH. I get it now.

    And, thanks for the idea, because I've been trying to think of a new post and couldn't think of anything.

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  24. Brilliant and moving post. I was going to oblige with a little response post, but my new computer died tonight. Bad mojo here of late. I think I'll break a glass or something to get the evil eye to feck off already.

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  25. Hey, what's that in the picture? I love the wall paper (really, so nostalgic), but I'm stuck on the mini diaper pail behind our butt...

    I'm not sure I know another soul on the planet who writes with as much brutal honesty as you, and certainly not as well. But was this about the writing or the catharsis, or both? It's a WOW kind of piece, Lisa, and I am with you in spirit.

    Tyson told me all about the storms you've been having out there, and the crazy tornado sirens in her neighborhood in the middle of the night are pretty scary.

    Hope you are doing well.

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  26. you are the fucking bomb.

    the strength and courage it took to hit "publish" (or post or whatever word Blogger makes you manhandle) is only exceeded by the talent it took to string this fine line of words together.

    seriously. holy shit. you're one of those writers who make me want to be a better writer and i don't care how damn cheesy that sounds. it's true.

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  27. It's after reading pieces like yours that I think maybe I'm not much of a writer. At the same time, I'm inspired and feel perhaps I should be writing more, with more honesty and then I think "I want cheese and crackers".

    Lisa, that was searing and brilliant. You're one hell of a writer. I've seen posts about 'where I write' and perhaps I'll do one myself. I'll let you know should that come to pass.

    Can I get you anything while I'm up?

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  28. After reading this extraordinary piece of work I'm feeling too inadequate to even craft a decent comment. I hope you'll submit this to some publications. It deserves the widest possible audience.

    I bow to your awesomeness, my friend. And there's no way I'm going to attempt to follow you on this one.

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  29. Powerful post. I doubt I could reveal myself as you do. I'm probably not that honest even with myself...

    I write directly beside where I paint, at the same old PC that contains all the photos I use, maintains all my blog files, and provides the search tools that I need to do my painting research.

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  30. Really engrossing, emotional post. I remember the period of time you went through and am glad you came through and were able to write to help yourself through it.

    I write in two places: either on the couch in our family room on the laptop or on the regular desktop up in the study.

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  31. I have died and went to reading heaven. On my laptop.....where? None of your business.:)

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And then you say....

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