![\"moleskinenotebook\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/moleskinenotebook-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>In one form or anoth\u00ader, and with vary\u00ading lev\u00adels of out\u00adput, I have writ\u00adten every day for 25 years. Some days it\u2019s been only a sen\u00adtence or two in my pock\u00adet note\u00adbook; many days, a few pages in my jour\u00adnal; and on one excep\u00adtion\u00adal day (dur\u00ading a man\u00adic cycle), I cranked out 8,602 words towards the sec\u00adond Dako\u00adta nov\u00adel. (I\u2019m sure of this num\u00adber because, for a long time, like a lot of writ\u00aders I kept track of my dai\u00adly word out\u00adput.)<\/p>\nI\u2019ve writ\u00adten through a hor\u00adri\u00adble tooth abscess, mononu\u00adcle\u00ado\u00adsis, and par\u00ada\u00adlyz\u00ading depres\u00adsion. I\u2019ve writ\u00adten through the death of my beloved grand\u00adfa\u00adther, and I even wrote on the morn\u00ading of my wed\u00adding (in my jour\u00adnal, briefly, about my bride-to-be).<\/p>\n
I was pon\u00adder\u00ading all of this\u2014how writ\u00ading has seen me through the best and the worst times of my life\u2014when I reached the end of my walk. I was miles down a dirt road, Wood\u00adstock Lane. Ahead, a flock of wild turkeys walked out of the woods and crossed the road.<\/p>\n
I thought about a dif\u00adfi\u00adcult email that I\u2019d had to write before I left on my walk, and how until I wrote it, I was uncer\u00adtain how I felt.<\/p>\n
And then, I had an epiphany. We writ\u00aders live for these, and we always<\/em> write them down. I took out my note\u00adbook and wrote,<\/p>\nIf you are tru\u00adly a writer, then writ\u00ading is how you process the world, and you can\u2019t be cer\u00adtain what you think or feel about some\u00adthing until you write about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I stood in the leaves on the edge of the woods and wrote many of the thoughts that appear in this blog entry. A Range Rover crept by, and in my periph\u00adery I saw the dri\u00adver star\u00ading at me. I ignored him. We writ\u00aders are used to this. We\u2019re used to whip\u00adping out our note\u00adbooks at inop\u00adpor\u00adtune times, or in less-than-ide\u00adal places. Just yes\u00adter\u00adday, in the super\u00admar\u00adket, I saw an attrac\u00adtive young moth\u00ader with tod\u00addlers, and the scene remind\u00aded me of some\u00adthing, and I stopped in the Bak\u00adery sec\u00adtion, plant\u00aded my note\u00adbook on some box\u00ades of pies, and wrote about it.<\/p>\n
At that point, fin\u00adished with my thought, I put my note\u00adbook away and head\u00aded back down the road. The wild turkeys were long gone. It was get\u00adting late in the day, and the woods were grow\u00ading dark.<\/p>\n
No mat\u00adter what vicis\u00adsi\u00adtudes life has brought me, writ\u00ading has always been there. And when I\u2019ve had prob\u00adlems, ques\u00adtions, or crises, even if I haven\u2019t writ\u00adten about them specif\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly, the very act of writ\u00ading<\/em>\u2014writ\u00ading anything\u2014has brought me answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, for the first time in weeks, I took a walk. A long walk. I put on my coat and my Boston Red Sox cap,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,20,75,36,7,76,13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramaticwriting","category-fiction","category-journalism","category-memoir","category-mystery-writing","category-personal","category-process","category-writers","category-writingexperiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5370"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6334,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5370\/revisions\/6334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"walking_in_the_mist.sized\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/walking_in_the_mist.sized_.jpg\")
<\/a> I passed a large mead\u00adow that my wife and I refer to as Dar\u00adcy Meadow\u2014named after Mr. Dar\u00adcy in Pride and Prej\u00adu\u00addice<\/em>, because on sum\u00admer morn\u00adings there is often a roman\u00adtic haze hang\u00ading over it like in the cli\u00admac\u00adtic scene in the 2005 movie. And I passed what we call the Christ\u00admas in Con\u00adnecti\u00adcut house. We call it this because the place looks exact\u00adly like the house in the clas\u00adsic film\u2014especially when there\u2019s snow on the ground.<\/p>\n