A Girl Named Eve

Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part.  If you're not scared, you're not writing. ---RALPH KEYES Oh, good! I tend to be a nervous wreck when I write about anything that's of any real significance. Lesson 5 of Barbara Abercrombie's A Year of Writing Dangerously is about getting caught. To sum it up Abercrombie says it best when she writes, "We're caught like a fish on the hook of our own words, our secrets exposed, our inner life and imagination up for inspection." I guess that's what I'm afraid of the most. People will judge me for what I once said or felt. They'll forget about the fluidity of human thought and spirit, and will deny me the peace that comes with it because it was put down on a book to stay trapped forever. But maybe I'm just projecting.

Lesson 3 of Barbara Abercrombie's A Year of Writing Dangerously is best summed up by Elizabeth Gilbert's quote: "I believe that - if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression - you should take on this work like a holy calling. I became a writer the way other people become monks or nuns... I was writing's most devotional hand-maiden. I built my entire life around writing."                                                                          -- Elizabeth Gilbert I was recently talking with some coworkers about my upcoming theater show and they asked, so this writing is what you do for a hobby? They know its not what I do for a living so its easy to apply labels and call something a hobby, but its what I do for a life. It's sort of hard to e...