It's A Lost Art, And I'm the One Who Lost It

Welcome. Welcome to this post.

That's a horrible beginning. But you know what, it's late, and I'm not changing it. In fact, I'm not even apologizing. 

What're you going to do, stop reading my blog? Ha! Impossible! You haven't started! You probably googled "where can i buy glasses" and wound up here by mistake. My unkownedness (that's a word) is why I win this time. 

I WIN. 

Okay, what was my point? I swear there was one. Really. 

Oh, right, letters.

 Fellas, letters are hard. (Okay, if by chance you are a sentient human and reading this, which is slim enough alone, and are female, which narrows that chance to exactly zero, I'm not insulting you or excluding you or anything. I swear. I just like to say "fellas" because it makes me feel like I'm writing to a screaming crowd of admiring males. But classy ones. Like all those guys in the brothel at the beginning of Moulin Rouge when Nicole Kidman is swinging on things. I mean, yeah, they're in a brothel, but they're all wearing tuxes and top hats and stuff, plus they get really excited when all Nicole has to do is swing a little, and I figure swankily dressed men as easily impressed as kindergartners are, like, my ideal target audience.)

Seriously.

You're looking at me funny, I feel it. You're like, "What, the alphabet confuses you?"

Ha-ha, you're hilarious. I'm sure that kills over appletinis at Thursday happy hour. 

But I mean letters, like written letters. To other people. 

Now here's the puzzling bit. It's not that I lack communication skills. I can talk to people very effectively. I can be funny, reasonably charming, energetic, endearingly modest...I can do that. I can talk to people in person, on the phone, by e-mail, instant messenger, facebook chat. I can even write one hell of a birthday card.

But for some reason, when I get a LETTER in front of me, like I start it with "Dear Whoever," I just FREEZE. All of my words just sort of frolic away. I begin to wonder how I ever had any thoughts on any subject EVER, because I cannot conjure a single one. I resort to forced humor in serious situations and writing in fancy script to distract you from the lack of content. 

I just wrote two letters. One was more formal and sentimental, a sort of goodbye letter. That went okay, but only because I'd planned it out first. On a computer. Where the world makes sense. Then I went to write this totally casual  (I mean I-could-have-opened-with-"hey, you"-casual) letter, and I CHOKED. Absolutely lost it. I had to stop early because I was breaking out in a cold sweat. 

Maybe I was freaking out because I was writing in pen, and you can't change that except with correction tape, which is totally visible and sometimes kind of hard to write over, so everyone knows that you don't have brains enough not to screw up the first time. But, come on. It was for one of my best friends, with whom I am frequently ridiculous. And yet writing her a letter almost gave me hives. 

I always thought people were crazy when they said letter-writing was a lost art, because I figured it was pretty much the same as talking or emailing. 

OH HOW WRONG I WAS. 

I'd be curious to know if anyone else feels this crippling fear of letters, or if I'm alone as usual. But seeing as there's no one there to tell me, the world may never know. Because biting the Tootsie Pop is cheating, Mr. Owl. I thought a bird with all the credentials to wear a graduation cap could grasp that.

Okay, Peace out, Fellas. Yup, I'm going to call you that forever. 

Writing is Hard. Except for Blogs, because Nobody Reads it Anyway

Woohoo. No preamble whatsoever, because that's how I roll.

So I wrote a book. Yes, actually. And don't be a jerk and be all "Can I like buy it, like at Borders?" because A) Borders is closed now and I miss it and thanks for rubbing that in, jackass and B) no, because it's not published. You don't just write a book and then Harper Collins and Scholastic show up the next morning and bid for your attention. At least not while you're awake.

So I wrote a book. But I'm not DONE writing the book, I just FINISHED the book. I know. It makes no sense. Here's what I mean. I wrote the whole thing. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If it were Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (and oh that it were), I wrote the part where he becomes a wizard ("but I cahn't be a wizard, I'm just -prepubescent squeak- Harry!") and the part where he has friends and does spells and Seamus burns his eyebrows off a couple times and we learn blond kids are jerks and Jesus I don't remember anything that happens in this book and the part where he goes down and looks in a mirror and defeats Voldemort through the magic of self-confidence or something. I'm not sure. It's been a while.

The point is, I WROTE all that. I have it. I even printed it out, so it's on paper and everything.
But I'm not happy yet. I don't like it. Like Ron still has purple hair and Hermione pretty much sounds like a jerk the whole time and there's this whole character named Barney that just needs to go. Or comparable issues, but in my book.  So I'm fixing it. Revising it. Editing, you know, that fancy writing term.

But I can never bring myself to actually do it. It's always late at night, when I'm almost asleep, that I'm like "YES WRITE A NOVEL NOW NOW NOW THIS WOULD BE THE PERFECT THING TO DO RIGHT NOW I SWEAR."
And that doesn't happen, because half of that thought was already a dream about sneaking off to the Potions room with a Slytherin boy anyway. (It should be clear by now that I like Harry Potter too much.)

So what do I do? I write a blog instead. Because that's productive. All 28 of you who have ever viewed this page, in, you know, all time surely are glad that I'm back. Woofreakinghoo.
Ah, look, I ended the same as I started. That's consistency right there.