“a moment to reflect” by devi laskar

My Book Writing World group was meeting one recent Monday night and it was a reminder that I had committed to write for an hour every day. But I was stalling around: email, online news (Greece gets a bailout! Lindsey Lohan to play Elizabeth Taylor!), computer games, the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.

Now it was the afternoon, and I still hadn’t written anything. I sat down, finally, and worked for a little while on a story about my friend Darlene, only to find that getting into her story moved me into a dead end. So I clicked on that little white rectangle at the top of the computer (New Blank Document, speaking of blank) and opened a new page.

Just then a new friend, also a writer, also named Sandy, but older, called me. For a while we exchanged those tidbits of information that new friends share. Then she said to me, “You are living the life I would like to live.”

When that elderly lady on a walker said that, somehow I felt the “I can do this” resolve come back. I sat down at the computer, stared out the window, and sneaked in a game of FreeCell.

Inspiration came. I pressed the Caps Lock key and started typing the new title: WRITER’S BLOCK.

Sandy Olson is new to the Book Writing World and has high hopes for learning the craft. Sandy has a B.A. from UC Berkeley in political science and an MA from San Francisco State University. She taught parent education classes through the San Francisco Community College for 22 years and taught Vocational English as a Second Language in Washington for 12 years and loved her foreign students. Her past experiences include motorcycle touring, sky-diving, and owning a scuba diving shop in Mexico. She is an ordained priest in the Independent Catholic Church. She loves to travel and does it a lot. She does not know how to sew and her cooking skills are slipping.