Bird by Bird

I went on an interview in New York before I graduated from college. The woman ran the NYC office of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I dont remember much of what she told me, except that I should read Bird by Bird by Annie LaMott.

I did, and it's basically about how you have to take life and writing one thing at at time -- idea, character, whatever. Just one thing at a time.

And I get that intellectually. But there is nothing I love more than getting carried away. Getting caught up. I love it. I love it when my characters make me cry and I didn't see it coming.

I love it when I can literally, literarily feel Chase's kisses, up high and down low. I love it that the man on paper turns me on. I love getting "well and truly rolled" (to quote a Laurell K. Hamilton phrase) by my creations.

Keir -- if that even is his real name -- rolls me. Gabriel rolls me. Angela hurts me, but I get her. Almost too much. The one thing she wants is the one thing that will be her undoing. I get that. God, do I get that.

I haven't let the words well and truly roll me in a long, long time. We've had one-night stands and flings over the years. But it's been a good decade since I let them in, or out, as the case may be.

Maybe the words are like sex? I can survive without them. I don't have to have them. Not really. I can do the flings and the one-night stands. I can even help myself help myself. But when I'm with them, when we're sweating and moaning and groaning and tangled up together, there's nothing like it. I can't duplicate that. I can't duplicate how it is when it's good. When it's me and them and us. To have that, I have to have that. To get it, I have to do it.

I miss it. I miss being on top of the words, riding them, bouncing on them. I miss the pressure of being under the words, feeling them rock against them, hearing that skin-on-skin sound, pushing up into them to meet them pushing down into me.

I miss what comes from being laid like that.