Friday, July 25, 2014

Poking at keys

"What do you write about?"

I've gotten that question a few times today because I'm at the annual BlogHer conference of women who publish online. And, to my surprise, I've met the question with a moment of pause. Not because I (admittedly) haven't written much lately, but because so often what my brain processes and sends to my fingers to poke out on my keyboard is a free flow and not well planned. But at the same time, the reason I go for days,weeks or months without writing is because I'm afraid of the free flow and exposing too much of what my brain is processing.

"I write about life with kids," I said.

And I guess that's what I do here. And I guess that's also what I stop myself from writing about. And it's hard to make that the answer because "life with kids" sounds so trivial and menial... an oscillation between boring and saccharine. But in reality, it's layered and complex and heart bursting... and hard. I overthink. "What do you write about?" is too close to "what do you think about?" and I won't give that away.

See? Not well planned.