My Words

  I had submitted some of my poetry earlier.  I think it's a good example of my not being some militant sob because I'm also other things.  One of those is a hopeless romantic.  It's probably the number one subject in the bulk of my poetry.  We're all looking for love, right?

  So one night, I got into a discussion of my poetry with this one young lady who happened to read something I was working on.  She wasn't a writer and was curious about the writing process.  As I've said before, whenever I've sat down and had to write something, it just fell out of me.  If I take longer than 10 to 15 minutes to write something, its rare.  Only a couple of pieces that I've written have I sat down with it the next day and tweaked it, or rewrote something, or changed the ending of it.  Most of them just fall out and there they are.

  So after this discussion, I got back to my room early and thought it would be nice if I wrote something for this young lady.  I turned the tv volume down and proceeded to write.  The next morning, I headed to the gift shop, picked up an appropriate blank card, and gave her My Words when we saw each other at a luncheon at noon.  If you're a writer and do this sort of thing, you don't think much of it.  It was no coincidence that much of what I said in our conversation the night before is included here.  The first thing she said to me was, "How could you do this?"

MY WORDS