Tired.

The great writer Isabel Allende famously starts each new novel on the 8^th of January. It was the 8^th of January in 1981 when she wrote a letter to her dying grandfather that later became her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then she has committed to many new works, always on the 8th, all of them enticingly chunky reads for the long, languorous days of summer. Especially the long, languorous days of a summer when it seems the pandemic will never end and we desperately need to escape somewhere, anywhere we can that's not here. 

Truth

'Truth seems to want expression. Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you and your characters wired and delusional. But when you open the closet door and let what was inside out, you can get a rush of liberation and even joy.' 

~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird 

The greater truth

"A lot of what frightens people about writing is this precise idea that once we put something on the page we are rendered vulnerable. There is truth to that, but the greater truth, for me, is that once I put something on the page I am also rendered a little less vulnerable. I have created for myself a piece of turf on which I am willing to stand." 

From The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron