This evening I sit with an edit on hold, a synopsis on hold, a new boss, and a stack of domestic-to-do items that multiplies each day, feeling the need to vent. I don’t want to plot or create an outline, or think about a chain of events, or for that matter even revise. I don’t want to dust or water the tomatoes or schedule my dentist appointment. I just want to write. Something I can spin off the top of my head without having to sound just-so.

I stopped writing the blog about 6 months ago because I couldn’t keep up with the weekly blog installment. Every social media site insists that daily posts are best, but several times per week is an absolute necessity. When I reached the point that I was posting just to post on a weekly basis, struggling to come up with ideas that a reader might connect with, I decided it was time to stop for a while. But I miss the blog. And, as I sit on the couch with my laptop, procrastinating over a glass of tongue-melting Merlot (because I have yet again given up sugar from my life) I decided to start the blog again and write about things that interest me. And, if a friend or fellow writer, or someone who stops by the blog by shear chance, decides to pick up this chain and send a comment back, then all the better. This will be a stress-free blog.

So, with all this newly acquired freedom I’ve decided to comment on something completely unrelated to writing. My daughter is attending Purdue University this fall as a freshman, majoring in biology. This makes me so happy. I would have majored in science myself in college, but the math killed me. I hated it. I love science but despise math; an unfortunate combination for a person longing to conduct scientific research. But now I get these interesting text messages from her about genetics and parasites and diseases. Here’s a recent text:

“There’s a gene that makes a person feel trust. People who have a hard time trusting other people are lacking this gene. Mothers addicted to crack kill this gene off. They get paranoid. Isn’t that crazy?”

I attended a writer’s conference several years ago and sat with a table of other writers for dinner one evening  – at the time, all of us unpublished hopefuls. The topic of conversation drifted to angst as one writer shared the pain she feels when she writes and can’t get the emotion or the tone just right. The conversation took this weird turn where people tried to one-up each other on the pain and sacrifice involved in the writing process. Pain? I say, if it hurts that bad, stop it! So, here’s to a day filled with passion and happiness and painless writing.