-- Wednesday, July 14, 1999 --

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10:26 a.m. The most amazing thing happened to me yesterday. Well, not really yesterday, but what is yesterday, really? I mean, it happened on Friday, but since I didn't know about it, it happened for me yesterday. Keep repeating: it's all in your mind.

It's exactly like the Blair Witch-spook-syndrome that I talked about yesterday. If you don't watch it, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, it can't bite you or carve weird symbols into your frontal lobe. You know how some people try to tell you to just watch the stupid movie because what you imagine is always worse? That is a total lie, I tell you: a total lie. My imagination runs to finding the perfect pair of soft suede, wine-colored shoes rather than to gore. My imagination creates rooms in my mind that Martha Stewart would feel shabby in. I imagine a big family reunion and everyone is civil. No gore.

Every single bad image I have in my brain has come from outside sources. I never would have imagined an alien snake-thing popping out of someone's chestal cavity in the middle of lunch. Nor a teenager's head spinning all the way around -- it just doesn't occur to me. Each and every bad image, from that stupid shower at the Bates' Motel to the obligatory full-color war atrocity in this week's Time magazine, every single one has come from the outside. Man's inhumanity to man, woman, and child. It's not my imagination.

Well, now I've run off the road here, haven't I? Let's see ... where were we going? ... oh yes, the good thing. Friday.

It's been a very busy time around here for the past few days, full of all the things that must get edited out of a public journal if you want to live to write another day. Because I've learned how to do that, finally. Maturity. Taking the high road.

But even though I've been busy, I've been secretly worrying and fussing with a private splinter of woe in my brain: now that I've put some writing out there (here), what if I've made a big, a huge mistake? I have, after all, been running silent for lo these many years, having taken too literally the harsh words of my agent on the other end of a pay phone when I was calling in from the road to see how my book was doing and she was having a party! A big party that I wasn't invited to. I've had nightmares about it ever since.

"Don't be such a spoiled brat," she said. And if I told you who she is, which I won't -- maybe I will? Should I? Arrrgh ... maturity is kicking in and my fingers are freezing up on the keys, so no, I'll not tell -- well, you would see the irony. But she was right, of course. I had had some success, and some success was going to be eluding me. That was the nature of things. Even if the party had been full of people whose arms could be twisted, I'd probably still be out in the cold on the side of the road in a phone booth with no light. Sigh. Where was I?

Oh, and she said one other thing that night that has stayed with me ever since: "Listen, sweetie: the only thing you have, really, is your next book." Wow. Cars were whipping by, months had passed since I'd written a word, and suddenly and already my currency was all used up. I could jiggle that coin return until dawn, but unless my next book clattered out, I was flat out of luck.

Suffice it to say that when I got home, I eventually took to my desk, and I really haven't gotten up from this chair since. Gotta make the doughnuts. Each and every day. I had to learn not to let anything come between me and my next book. And the next, and the next. Stay put. Keep writing. Pile up the words. And believe me, I love to go to parties.

But, I had to learn how to prioritize. And to specialize. I've had to learn how to not open the mail until I'm ready to deal with its contents. No email, either, until I've written this piece. And believe me, I'm really trying to get through this piece today so I can plug into the email. Because -- because I am so happy!

Yesterday I was just wandering around on the web, as is my wont, poking here and there, and I poked back to the page of the Diary Registry where they have a Launch feature, and which, yes, I'd submitted my url to, but really, as I'd begun to fear, my stuff is foul and creepy and nobody wants to come to my table to see my wares. Poor poor me. But wait! Suddenly the page came up and since Friday, I tell you -- since Friday! It's been me on the page. Me me me. Tra la tra la.

Maturity be damned. Happiness is embraced. Party on the other end of the wire -- I have appeared on the map. My name exists somewhere. I link, therefore, I am.

Tomorrow -- a statement of purpose, For sure.