Laura Axelrod writes in a recent post "Suffice it to say, secrecy plays an integral role in my writing process. Maybe more so than it should. Keeping things hidden and keeping a blog is a strange dichotomy to maintain. I do notice that the times I've been more "public" are usually the times that my work has been lighter and less intense. " I've been thinking about this recently. Laura's post makes me think about it in a different way. I never used to talk about what I was writing until after it was written. It was always important to me that it exist in a bubble and I wouldn't talk about this bubble for fear that some offhand comment would pop it. Now I'm blogging about current projects, I talk to people about them and I'm still not sure if this is a good idea or not. Perhaps I'm playing with fire here and it could be very bad. Perhaps I've gotten better at not listening to people who I feel are wrong about what my work should be or don't understand what I'm doing. Perhaps I believe in what I'm doing much more than I ever have before. Or perhaps I'm still not really saying that much or sharing that much. This morning I found myself telling K about something I'm thinking of writing now even though it wasn't completely formulated. I don't know if she got what I was trying to say. I doubt I was very clear. I can't really ever explain what I'm doing or trying to do which was maybe why I had this secrecy thing. It was secret because I had no words for it. Or I could try but really there was no way to explain that what sounded crazy was actually something that on the page might work. I just keep messing with it until it's right. I don't really know what I'm doing. I mean I don't really know how I'm doing what I do when I write. I like to keep myself in the dark. And when it is working, really working, it's an automatic pilot sort of thing until it runs out of steam for the day. But that automatic writer will only happen if I do all the pre work of figuring out what happens when. Taking all the things that are supposed to go in and then putting them in the right order and figuring it out and figuring it out and a level of excitement plays into it too. Because it won't work unless I'm excited about it. And to be excited, I have to know enough. I'm dying to go home and try to figure this out right now. But I know it will be weeks and weeks or months and months before it's all there and in that time the excitement still has to be there. Otherwise I'll drop it and try to do something else. Maybe it's the constant discovery, the adding of this idea and that idea that keeps it exciting. The clearer it is and for me the brighter the colors are when I think of what I'm trying to do, the better it is. The colors are real bright right now. I could burn out from this, I think. I hope it lasts.