Writing a Blog

Em, on Writing a Blog Blogging has changed me. Writing a new post every day is ... wow ... a huge job, a much bigger challenge than I ever imagined. As a novelist I never wrote about me. I used things that happened to me --mostly big deal events -- and made them happen to the characters I invented -- the heroines in my novels and the villains. Villains are fun. Like ‘dear best friend’ Aileen in “Somebody,” -- she's a clever, gossip-mongering, liar who deliberately seduces and marries the man my heroine loves. Aileen was based on a loving, dear friend of mine who was after my husband, JC. The real me -- not just my love life, my dreams, dancer-strivings, car crash, being booed onstage, those stories -- three years ago,when I began blogging , were merely a source. I called it my secret place. But since then, blogging every day meant I could not longer be an invented character -- I had to be me.

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So what won't I write about? BEDROOM. Sex. (It's in my novels, not in my blog). I won't invite you into my bedroom, but I'll tease and bouree (a ballerina's fast move on her toes in pink toe shoes) all around the subject. DEPRESSION. My own occasional black moods, my fears about dying, growing old -- I'll tell you how I avoid black thoughts, but I won't blog about them. WORRIES and WOES I make lists. A list helps me. A list shapes an amorphous black mood into small, handleable chores, specifics you can deal with. And what do I write about? I don't know until I stub my toe on it. Right now, in my daily blogging, I push away the fences, open the gates, pull up the window shade and let light in. And, I say truthfully, clearly, as unfancily as possible -- what I'm thinking.