Some words. Many not mine.

I've gone long silent, I know. I keep coming here and waiting for the desire to write--and when that fails, waiting for words, any words, but the violation of what I thought was a safe space stays with me.

So, in lieu of words of my own, here are some of Emma Bolden's:

What Dylan’s writing goes far beyond that: he’s showing us his mind, and how his mind became his mind. He’s showing us how to live a life of the mind, how the most important thing may not be what we produce, but why we produce it: what we believe and know and think and feel inside.

Here she is talking about Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, Volume I, in specific, but also just his process of writing/creating, in general. YES, I thought as I read what she wrote, that's it exactly. Not for everyone, certainly, but for some of us.

It is a rendering of process that I want to remember. When I fret about rejections. When I fret about tough critics, anonymous or not. And every single time I sit down to write.