(not) Too late to write...

I don't know what I'm doing.  My brain usually shuts off right at or just before 8:12 p.m.  I'm not usually in bed by now, rather curled up on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother reruns - asleep.  So the fact that I'm blogging only means one of three things:

1.  I can't find any reruns of HIMYM while channel surfing and I'm too lazy to grab one of our (every) season on DVD.
2.  Abbey is in dreamland and Jeff is at band practice.
3.  Inspiration has rattled my bones.

Okay it means two of three things.  Or all three but I haven't turned on the t.v. to see if I hit the trifecta.

But mainly, I'm putting a little nugget out here because I've been inspired and I need to hold myself accountable to that inspiration.  On Friday night I returned from the inaugural Frederick Buechner Writer's Workshop at Princeton Seminary.  I'll save the "small-town girl travels to the big city" post for another day.

Right now, with the dwindling bits of energy I have left, I want to put into just a few words how incredible the week was.  So - for brevity's sake, I'll use bad grammar, lots of quotes, and wonderful fragments.

-Barbara Brown Taylor is about as close to God as I've come so far in my 31 years.  And I was standing right next to her at the coffee shop one morning.  (I'm sure she wanted to talk to me just as badly, right?)  I know she's only human, but really, we all have to be star-struck fans every once in a while.
- When asked if there was a particular place she goes to write, BBT mentioned a little place on her property that helps her focus and center herself.  The questioner asked, "So like a hermitage?"  "Well," BBT shrugged, "…like a shed." It was funny. You had to be there.
-New friends are like a giant cold glass of Gatorade at the end of a run on a smothering kind of day.
-New friends who are amazing writers who you never would've met otherwise are like a gallon of cold Gatorade at the end of a run on a smothering kind of day.
-"Writing is sacrament.  Writing provides an occasion for mystery.  And mystery is the presence of more meaning than you can comprehend."  Thank you Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce.
-tell the truth
-"change occurs in the context of relationship"
-BBT - what does it mean to write for thousands of people?  - "it's not about vomiting up your hairballs in public"
-Rachel Held Evans - to be a writer, you need a thick skin and a tender heart.
-Sarah Arthur - What is that one thing you must start/finish/work on?
-"Journal writings are offerings of something like a prayer.  There is an audience who hears us, even if we never share."  Thank you again, Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce.

I want to be a writer.  There I said it.  To all seven of you! ;)

I don't know where to begin or where it will end, but someone once said you have to start somewhere.

Reading is a good place to start.  I am ashamed to admit there are many classics of which I have not creased the binding.

Therefore, may it be so that on this 15th day of June, 2015, I, Anne Ross Bruce, hereby declare this the

"Summer of Reading and Writing"

Which means I'm going to read and write like never before.

I have some thoughts on where to begin, but would appreciate any recommendations you can muster!

(I should set some concrete goals, though, shouldn't I?  But it's already 10:02...)

I knew it was too late to write…more where this came from.

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
Frederick Buechner