I’ve been writing all my life. It started probably around five, maybe six, with a pencil sketched comic strip featuring a simple, wiggly outline of a heroic sheepdog called Flufster.  By 9, I was the mad short story girl, most accompanied by minor illustrations.  Middle-school saw my first book – a neatly presented, word-processor-produced anthology of my poetry up to that point in my life.  It included nearly 50 poems, ranging in topic from love to murder, flowers to fornication… yes, I said middle school.  Don’t ask.  It’s just my brain, and the point is that it has always been my brain.

Writing, words, emotions, expressions, visible people with visible flaws pushing through real-life problems – even problems I have not experienced directly, are all just natural components to some bizarre and expansive spiritual index from which I draw material.  These things don’t “come to me.”  They come through me.  I’ve never curtailed the act of expression because I have no control over it.  I can only let it out or be eaten alive by it.

But if you know me, you know that my real hang-up isn’t writing about things.  It’s learning about things – and learning them so well that I am able to turn the valve from suck to flow.  It’s the channeling of information into and out of my mind.  The type or topic of said information need only be of relative interest.  All knowledge is based on experience, and I want to experience everything.

It’s a very simple process.  First I flood, then I write.

Moving forward in this work of building my writing platform has brought to the table the very language my brain speaks.  After decades of unbridled self-expression, all my flooding and all my writing, the countless Obsessions du Jour (cut me a break… I’m a red-headed, Italian Aries), I’m learning about writing for the first time.

I ramble through tons of articles and commentaries on writing.  I watch The Writer’s Room on Sundance.  I read Writer’s Digest.  I follow the blogs of other writers.  I’m flooding… Oh, look… I’m writing about writing.  (Geez, I hope my novel isn’t this predictable.)

But what am I learning?  I’m learning new ways of tapping into the stream that once flowed only when it chose to.  I’m learning how to craft the result of unchecked creative cascade into something even better.  I’m stepping outside my box to move around and get a better look at what I’m creating, and I’m tweaking it from there – like a painter placing one brush stroke from the corner of the room.  I’m gaining skill.

So, with a bow of gratitude, I tip my hat to all who, unbeknownst to them, help provide me with this education. What a beautiful, useful lesson this has been thus far, and there’s so much still to learn.

I’m a sponge in the ocean, a kid in a candy store.