Write with ease, I do not.

I envy people who seem to write with ease...like Neil Gaiman, whose blog I just came off reading. His words flow, thoughts wrap around each other, enhancing the one before and after. It is as if Neil is in the room talking with me. The same is true of Desmond Morris' work.  I am reading his memoir "Watching", filled with vignettes from a lifetime of interesting events. Each event is a story unto itself, told as if he was an honored guest at a dinner party.  The words flow, unencumbered.

Not me or my writing. I struggle with each sentence, even in a letter to a friend; rearrange the order of words; move whole paragraphs. You can imagine how I am in writing my novel; each page seems to take a month of struggle.

Thank God for my weekly critique group whose members look askance if I do not bring something, even a single page of 'finished' work. That keeps me working hard at rearranging, modifying to have something 'finished'.

The only thing, in addition to being passionate about my main character, that keeps me plugging away is that readers and editors say my words present a unique "voice."  That encourages me, that perhaps my struggles are worth it and I should keep plugging away. I can't do much about the way I write, anyway. I have tried to be more up-front logical, to outline before writing. But even as a school girl, and as a ghost writer for the president of a small college, "scattered" is how I have written, letting it "all hang out," then going back, scooping out the essense and putting order to it.

Today is critique day and I only have five hours left before I need to present a few pages of half-decent work. Already I have spent several hours on these pages, so perhaps they are close...