Anne Lamott.  Bird by Bird . Fabulous book.  Almost gives me the courage to sit down and try to write again. (Unfortunately, I've got too much "gotta write" stuff on my plate right now to get to the "wanna write" things...)

We used to joke in college about how, when attempting to read anything in German, you had to read the whole sentence to the end till you found the verb, and then go back to the beginning again to catch everything you didn't know what to do with until you found the verb. "Yesterday did I to the store in order to buy some milk for the breakfast cereal of my children...go." (Actually, it's kind of like listening to my husband relate a story...he rambles on for days before getting to the point of the story, and I, being a good computer-using former-sesame-street-watching U.S. American with a short attention span tend to sit and wait till he GETS to the point, at which time I make him go back and re-relate all the dopey details that actually were pertinent except that I didn't know what the story was about till he got to the end.) (In my defense: only about 40% of those details actually usually ARE pertinent.)

Also in college (high school too, actually), my English teachers used to read my papers, hand them back to me, and say "simplify the sentences. shorten the sentences. shorten the total word count by 30%."  I hated this. Invariably some good stuff had to be cut. But the paper was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS WITHOUT EXCEPTION much stronger and tighter after I did it.

peace,
J

I have no idea why, after so long, I'm suddenly thinking about animal guides again.

I love that Reggie loves Anne Lamott.

Operating Instructions got me through my first bout of PPD; Travelling Mercies the second.  I want to go read everything she's ever written, but I've long learned that you can only read something for the first time once, so I want to save some of the really good stuff for whatever hysterical emotional upsets come in the future.