it adds up

Back to the regular schedule today — good morning out there!

Today the clouds are bulbous and full of pink. What’s the sky like outside your window?

The forecast is for 56 degrees in San Francisco today. I talk to Kathleen in Atlanta, where it’s been in the 90s with tremendous humidity. What can we say about summer except hello?

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I’ve updated the calendar page with the Fall & Winter workshop schedules — let me know if you want to be on the waiting list for those groups!

The upcoming Declaring Our Erotic workshops will be open to everyone — folks of all genders & sexual orientations! I’m considering doing the same with my Winter 2012 Write Whole workshops — opening it up to all survivors of sexual trauma, regardless of sex or gender. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

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I have to get in the shower soon. Yesterday, I spent a couple hours going back through my blog, and read that line quite a few times. I’m gathering up material for a couple of book projects and one article — and I realized just how much writing I’ve got in here. In spite of the days of frustration, in spite of often feeling like I don’t have enough time to write anything, it turns out that in just the year or so that I’ve been blogging approximately 5 days a week, even just for a few minutes, I’ve generated a lot of usable writing.

10 minutes every day for 30 days adds up — for 6 months, adds up. For a year? Yes. Start now. Just keep writing. I know it’s not enough in this moment — but the moments coalesce, and you’re building something, even if, in these 10 minutes, it doesn’t feel like you are.

Take a few minutes right now, and jot down a list of things you want to write about — questions or memories or stories you’re working on, or wishing you were working on. Write the list at the back of your notebook, or in a note on your phone, or into a new document on your computer.

Then let one of those topics choose you, and just devote 10 minutes to it today. Let the words flow. Start with, “What I really want to say about ____ is…”  — don’t stop to edit or process the right place to begin. Editing comes later. Just generate the material.

I’m grateful for you today. I’m grateful for your presence, your process, the creation that you are — and for your words, too, yes, always.