Writing

I had coffee the other night with my friend Sue. It was nice to go out in the evening for no real reason--not to the library for school books, not to get groceries or someone's birthday gift or tape or dog food, not to exercise. But just to have pure social time. Basically I only do that with my book group, and that's just once a month or every 6 weeks.

Anyway, we talked about a lot of things. Homeschooling was a huge. We are having the same kinds of frustrations with our kids around school work, although she only has two kids, and they are 13 and 10--so none of my frustrations around noise level and little ones needing or wanting something while I'm trying to help Rachel and Julia. Additionally, she moved here from Arizona--a place with no regulations in regards to homeschooling. So she had many questions, since New York is one of the most highly regulated states.

Then we both discovered we love to write. We both dream of being published. We both have the problem of life completely getting in the way of writing. We both realize that we "waste" tons of time every day that could be spent on writing--watching TV, talking on the phone, reading magazines that really do nothing to improve our lives after they're done....we talked about writing techniques, and she told me of a series of books I should read on the subject.

We agreed that we would try harder to write--maybe it won't happen every day, but to be mindful and try harder to do it. And to meet every few weeks for an evening of coffee, jotting notes and ideas, and critiquing the other's work. I think it will be a lot of fun, and who knows what could come out of it?

--Jen