Thank God For Cheesecake

I used to take my journal to cafes and ruminate for hours. These days, I take my little Mac and sit with the 20-somethings, dispatching e-mails and posting to my blog. Age is really only on the outside.
I still sometimes take my journal, by the way. It's amazing how many knots come untangled with a cup of coffee and a piece of cheesecake.

Of course, there are ways to untie internal knots without cheesecake. About a hundred years ago, when I was struggling with my Masters thesis and had no idea anymore what I was even writing about, my wise advisor assigned me an essay a day until further notice. Essay writing, that is, not reading.

Every day, I had to commit to paper a page and a half or so of composed, integral thought. For me, this was a very different process to journal writing. It imposed the stricter parameters of a formal essay and forced me to get to the no-nonsense heart of one single idea. It also made me hold my subject at arm's length, and this led to clearer and more objective thought that often carried me far from the original tangle of emotions to a lyrical piece of writing that could stand on its own merit.

This was back in the days when people still wrote with paper and pen, before word processors. The consumption of ink was astronomical, but the conceptual process was pretty much the same. Start writing, find out what you have to say, and make it intelligible to someone else. And, if possible, beautiful.

It only took ten days of essays for me to move beyond my block, but it taught me a skill I've carried with me for twenty-five years.

Of course, I'd rather have cheesecake, hands down.

I still have a million things to do at once, including getting my agent query off this week, which is a bundle of tasks in itself: cover letter, synopsis, and sample chapter.

Competing with the query on my list is my eBook, The Day-Job Survival (and Escape) Kit . I wrote DJSK three years ago as a manual of insights and exercises for making your day job as inspired as your art and sold it for a short time on my own website. I've decided to update it and get it out there again, but in a much bigger way. And I know all too well what this means. The dreaded marketing.

Oh, if only I could write all day long and let marketing magically happen on its own. But these days writers have to be prepared to promote their own work, publisher or no publisher. For non-sharks like me, this is a knot of the first magnitude.

You'll be hearing about Step Two of this incredible journey very soon.

Step One? Order one large cheesecake to go.