llbwritesto.me

You can say that now. Because I felt like writing to you. And you decided you felt like reading.

Why I Write

Writing Love, Energy, and Empty Sandboxes

By

Dear      ,

You might remember this. There are people who do.

Five years and four months ago, I quit blogging. I wrote about that at Jane’s. The departure was, to a great degree, about energy—energy I no longer had. And the years have gone by since then, and so much has changed, and so much has not.

What has changed? Read about that, too, at Jane’s.

What has not changed…

I love to write to you. If that’s all I could do, I would probably be quite satisfied. Writers have their ways.

Today I am tired, and all the things I’ve been thinking to share with you are folded into their sleepy little beds in inaccessible parts of my brain. My sandbox is quiet and empty. I think it’s important to go with that. So I’m respecting the absence of energy and sharing someone else’s words with you instead.

She wrote it for me, when she heard I was blogging again. I like to call this “friendship writing.” It’s one of my favorite kinds. Thank you, Maureen, my friend.

Energy is more than E=MC2.

Picture it: the yogi displaying
not one whiff of sweat as she
mind-bends her way to Nirvana;

or the green-eyed poet stringing
i ams among six stanzas she will
later commit to mime and memory;

or the race-walker powering up,
post-workout, on granola bars
created with all-natural ingredients

harvested from her garden of greens
denied such chemical transformations
as might be recalled from the sixties;

or the scientist springing the door
to her media lab, announcing
the antithesis to the synthesis that’s

just come clear; or the once-full-time
blogger envied by all who know
that to read her is to love her both

in and outside the virtual world
that she codes in 1s and 2s before
translating her HTML into terabytes

of prose and poems her fans will
twitter and tweet so long as they
get to play in her sandbox too.

—Maureen Doallas

For you who have come to my sandbox today and found it quieter than you expected it to be, I wish you the ability to listen to your own rhythms and go with them. I wish you, too, a little friendship writing.

As Always,

L.L.

On Neil Gaiman, The Huffington Post, and Energy

By

Dear      ,

I wanted to tell you…I do not regret writing for The Huffington Post.

Some writers, when they move on to new places in their writing (or when those places move on to new writers), regret what came before. I understand that. I’ve written books with things in them that are no longer quite “who I am” and “how I am.” I’ve written for places whose visions and practices change, leaving me in an odd place for having been a writer there. But they’re a part of my journey as a person. And they’re a record of my writing—my style, my explorations, my approach at a given time. They remind me (and you) that I’m just an ordinary person, who has embarked on the sometimes extraordinary task of setting it all down in a way that entertains you (and me).

To be a writer for the long haul, I think you have to be able to live without regrets. Regrets are always dragging you backwards, instead of releasing you towards what could be.

(I meant to say, btw, that I can be tangential. This might happen when I write to you. I mean, when I write for places like HuffPo, I’m not really allowed to be tangential, which is why it’s not nearly as fun as writing to you.)

As for fun, that’s where Neil Gaiman comes in.

I went to see him yesterday. Me and about 200 other people. (And I did get to meet him, and he did have some never-before-heard-by-his-best-friend advice (for writers) which I will share in an “exclusive” over on Patreon. At Patreon, I might also share a story about Neil’s shoes next to mine. Soon.)

Anyway. Neil Gaiman. And fun.

That’s where the topic of Energy comes in—a topic I just committed to explore for 30 days, over at Joshua Spodek’s place. (Well, I will explore the topic here, where I’m writing to you. But I made the commitment over at Joshua’s. You might like to make one too, if you’re in the mood. And then we can be committed together. Or. Hmm. Something like that.)

For the past few months, I’ve been listening to Neil Gaiman read his stories on CD. So I’ve gotten his voice pretty well into my soul. This was a nice prep for hearing him on-stage! It made me extra attuned to his energy levels, as he answered questions and shared about strange events like the switching out of Mexican food for marriage.

If I’m going to think about the topic of Energy (which I am), I really want to think about more than solar power. I want to think about human power. And the things that power our hearts. And the things that break them, or, at the very least, slow them to a snail’s pace.

Neil’s heart, I’m pretty sure, has suffered from the project he’s been working on. I mean, he said that he’s not really into being a show runner. And he said why he did it anyway. And I can tell you about that elsewhere.

But right here, right now, what I want to say to you is that Energy is not just solar and wind and waves and and and. No, it’s something you and I deal with right within our own selves.

Which is one reason that while I don’t regret writing for The Huffington Post, I probably won’t try to write there again, at least not any time soon.

Because…

You weren’t there. Or, if you were, it was so noisy I couldn’t sense your presence (and they kept popping up other stories between you and me—stuff that I would regret if I’d been the one writing it).

Anyway, I’d rather be writing to you. It gives me a whole lot more energy than it takes away.

I hope that for you, today. Something that gives you more than it takes away.

As Always,

L.L.

I Like to Change My Mind, When the Time Is Right

By

Dear       ,

A long time ago, I started blogging. Over time, it grew to three blogs. Then it grew into books. Then it grew into a whole website that now serves teachers, students, readers, writers, and people who just want to live deeply and beautifully. That website makes me very, very happy. It makes others happy, too. If you’ve never visited there, I suspect you could also find joy in its colorful pages.

But back to the story at hand.

Years after I started blogging, I stopped. Three blogs was just too much. And my direction had changed.

Now you could say I’ve started again. Blogging, that is.

Except.

This isn’t a blog, exactly. It’s me writing to you in my journal. Sometimes it’s me showing you things I wrote a long time ago and forgot about, that I found intriguing enough to rescue from obscurity. It’s also me sharing the whereabouts of my professional writing, should you find that of interest.

I’ve always said I write for love (not to be loved, but for the love of others). Here, that’s still true. As I write to you.

As Always,
L.L.