My friend's blog.

My friend Sandy started a blog of her own this week. This picture is Sandy writing in her journal on a camping trip we took last year. Her blog is called "Life in Escalante" and it's a recreation narrative. I'm helping her figure out Blogger, but she has a Mac and I can only help her out as much as I understand Macs.

Sandy is a healthy influence on me. She constantly asks me to keep writing, holds mini writer workshops at her house here, keeps a daily journal, and is gentle in her criticism of other work. She's from the "JUST WRITE, DAMMIT" school and does not worry about much else. She does nice things for me, like dropping off the Writer's Market book and telling me to "find something to write." The book is still sitting in my kitchen. She is driven. She just began to do this a few years ago, and I must say I am proud of her tenacity and her desire. I'm glad she moved to town. It's small here and any new people that are interesting make it better immediately.

She drops off her work and I edit it for her, and I discovered that I still enjoy doing that. I wondered if I still had those skills after being out of circulation for eleven years (I do). I sort of forgot all the official proof reading marks, but I have an AP style book around here that has them. There is a part of college that stuck with me, after all. I'm a lazy writer, though, and if I am not motivated I don't do it. I like writing to a certain pen pal of mine, and I like the blog, but I'm not usually writing much else. Shame on me.

I suppose I'm officially finished with my blog hiatus for now. I did the list of "things I love" to get my fingers moving again. I thought it very high school-ish, but it did what I intended it to do--get me writing again. I left several treasured and beloved things off of the list upon further consideration:

Badminton, IKEA, Scrabble, and black jack can easily be added, as can Nevada and New Mexico, quality coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, lobster and shell fish.

Anyway...happy Saturday. As always, there is more to come.