Tally Frame

1/7/16 – Didn’t hit 3 pages yesterday but am intent on doing so today. I woke just a few minutes ago.. time now 7:16 and I couldn’t go back to sleep and why would I with all this writing to do. When home from dinner with Alice last night I dove into client work I still hadn’t finished. Should finish that tonight. But this morning, is about the ‘free’… feeling free… my 2017 pulse of freedom. We all, writers or no, need this. Especially parents, and we find it when and wherever we can. I know you love your babies, I do too, but we need this time. As a writing father it’s getting more and more arduous to find time for extended sittings. Huh, not even ‘extended’, just time for a sitting where you can get out more than those little hundred-or-so-word bursts you thumb on your phone. I do them, too. But you and I know that’s not writing– I mean, it’s not REAL writing. You may post it to your blog or use it later as a launch-pad for some article or story or something, but it’s not the kind of session you want. Sometimes it’s all you can do, jot something here and there in some little notebook as I did yesterday at work or have those little phone dashes, but mornings like this are what you really want, what you really think of when you think of yourself as a writer.

Three pages is a mountainous order, I know.   But that’s my magic number, to be honest. Used to be a thousand words but I find anyone can do that. I’m no mathematician, but you could break a thousand words up into ten hundred-word bursts on your phone throughout the day if you want to. OR, if you did it in one sitting, then what? You’re done? You don’t want to write anymore for the rest of the day? Again, this is just my mentality. But it is my mentality. Being a writer involves being a bit bizarre in your discipline. Doing something no one else in the world can do, or at least how you do it. These were my first thoughts as I came back to life this morning, letting the last of my Donatiello Pinot leave my scope and sensation.

Today’s three are a redefining declaration for me, and again, giving me a certain vocational and avocational liberty that many only dream of. I just write mine. That simple. Like a magic trick– No, not ‘like’. It IS sorcery of sorts, my own paginated alchemy for reflection or meditation, hoping someone can relate be they parent or writer or curios about their own abilities, passions or future– whatever. Further into 7 o’clock’s hour and further into ’17, the year I turn 38. How did that happen? How did I get so close to two years away from 40? Did I just write that, with me as a reference? Forty, forty… me and forty… How can writers get old? How are we allowed to age? Three pages a day is a fine and refining effort to war with aging. So here I am, up early. Writing.

Now I miss my kids. Wonder if they’re up, at their grammy’s house. Will they have a passion like me? Will they write? What kinds of goals will they measure before themselves and commit to? If you are a writing parent reading this, I know your mind’s gone here– What writing advice do I give my babies? Not sure I have any. Not sure I’m qualified to give any. I could barely reach my aim.

Till today.