writing love

Day 3 of 31 at TWT!

 It's already after 8 p.m. I've done a little planning and sent a few emails, and it's a Thursday in that stretch of late winter where the weeks are long, the weather can't make up its mind, and spring break is still far away enough to feel truly distant. I might be a little too cozy in my hooded, fleece, footed onesie on our cushy microfiber couch. It would be so, so easy to just turn on the tv now and try to keep my heavy eyelids open for one show.

So why am I writing?

I love the March Challenge.

I love the community that has been built over time, and the way that even as it ebbs and flows, with old friends dropping off and new ones dipping their toes in, it's still somehow one community. I love "meeting" new people and "visiting" familiar friends as we share our stories. I love checking my Gmail app too often in anticipation of comments after I publish a post.

I love the nudge to try something that seems almost impossible, to push myself to rise to a challenge that, in the midst of teaching and momming and everything in between, seems nearly out of reach, yet enticing enough to try. 

I love that the challenge is not just to complete the writing, but to play at being a better writer, nurtured by such a diverse flood of mentor texts that all sparkle with possibility in their own ways: "Hey, try this!" "Ooh, look at that!" Formats, topics, layers of complexity, familiar and unfamiliar strategies woven together in unique ways. 

I love talking to my students about how I'm challenging myself and how I'm living like a writer, building anticipation for the April student challenge.

I love living like a writer, with story ideas swirling in my brain, constantly on the hunt to notice the tiniest details that might otherwise escape me.

I love knowing that all these little moments, thoughts, and feelings that would have otherwise faded into the mist of the mundane are captured, preserved, waiting for someday-me to click on tags and titles and be transported back to this snippet of time, to this exact version of me. 

I love playing with words. I love the feelings of my fingers dancing on the keyboard to catch the thoughts that tumble through my brain. I love reaching for just the right word or phrase, testing and saboreando different possibilities until I find the one that's just right, exacto, in one idioma or another. 

I love stepping back into the little-girl-me who snuck out of bed to scrawl poems in a notebook after the whole house was still, the me who kept a notepad and pen on the floor by my bed for middle-of-the-night epiphanies or words that jumped and scampered through my brain as shafts of moonlight sliced across my room.

I love writing. I love, love, love being a writer.

And I want everyone else to love it too. <3