well, it’s back to the world of regular blogging — as you can probably tell by the reinstatement of the usual graphic up above. the flag was wonderful, but pink flowers and blue skies resume their place as this internet warbler climbs down from her political soapbox (not too far from the next soapbox, of course :) ).

before i get too far into today’s post, i wanted to say a big thank you to all who posted comments on yesterday’s post. i’m not quite sure how it happened, but the blog counter indicated that the post was hit 250 times. aside from being just plain stunned, i’m flattered. i appreciated hearing from you all very much. sometimes i write these things and get a little self-conscious about how they’ll be received. so it was encouraging to hear from so many of you.

now then. business as usual.

According to a wordpress.com headline i saw the other day, November is National Write a Novel Month. WordPress sponsors it, and encourages all bloggers to join in (you can do it!). And I gotta say, I’m tempted to give it a shot. Again. I’ve actually tried writing a novel a few times in my life. I find it completely daunting, to be honest. I think I’m more of short story writer. Well, more of a two-sentence vignette writer, actually. Anyway, it’s a hard process. I feel like it’s hard to keep a story going, hard to develop something that’s even interesting enough to keep going. And of course, hard to stick with it — novels are no small feat.

But the longer I blog, the easier writing is coming to me — it’s the “getting back on the bicycle” metaphor. (I think. What is that metaphor again?) Anyway. I used to write a lot as a kid, and then I wrote a lot as a student over the years. But somehow in between all the outlines I did in Bible school and my master’s thesis, I stopped writing for pleasure. It became a tool, and one that I was forced to use so often that I didn’t play with it anymore. After my thesis was done, I didn’t write for several years, and coming back to it — even for the sake of this blog — has been a big challenge at times. What words to use, why doesn’t that thought seem the same on paper as it does in my head, what can i tweak to make that better, and so on. But the longer I keep this blog, the easier it becomes to write again.

The point is that I’m thinking writing a novel might be a good exercise. Even if I don’t actually succeed, the practice would be invaluable. A blog is easy because you can use your own voice, and there is a certain liberality — informality, colloquality, etc — that is completely permissible, even expected. Writing a proper piece of fiction, however, requires tightening the proverbial belt. If there is a proverbial belt. Which could be the next step for me – I’ve gotten comfortable again with putting my thoughts into words, maybe now it’s time to put words into a proper order.