The Capstone Course

 It’s early Sunday morning (think 6:00), and I’m sitting at the prayer cabin. I’ve been up for about 45 minutes writing in my journal and drinking coffee on this gorgeous fenced-in porch. It’s 76 degrees out with a light wind, which makes it the perfect weather for being outside, at least right now. It’s going to get up to 95 again today, which I’m not looking forward to. Here’s a picture of what I was doing at 5:30 this morning:

I’ve been working on my Capstone course, a culmination of all four courses I had taken which results in a 15-page story. I must tell you, I’ve been having problems getting this story out. I put together a rough draft. The students in the Capstone are supposed to give you feedback. I got a “good,” another “good,” and then a few sentences on how it was good. That is not helpful at all. So, I got in touch with some people from a former workshop I did, and whoa, way more help there! I decided to scrap the whole story and start over, basically. I’m keeping elements and descriptions, but the advice to narrow down my focus was invaluable.

 As I was working on this story last night, though, I was thinking, “Good, God, maybe I’m not a writer, after all. Maybe all these years I’ve fooled myself into thinking I have some sort of talent.” I read through the first initial draft of Anna (which is the story’s name), and my only thought was that it’s crap. It feels like it’s written by a sixth grader. I went to bed beating myself up.

 I guess I’m still beating myself up this morning. As I’m working on the blog, I’m wondering if I should even be blogging anymore. I’m wondering if I should just be keeping everything under wraps in my journal. Honestly, I hadn’t journaled in weeks before I came here. I felt like I didn’t have anything worthwhile to say. Then I arrived at the cabin and the floodgates opened. I wrote over 10 pages between 3:00 and 9:00 pm. It felt good to just sit down and let everything out. I’ve decided I need to get back to writing every day, even if it’s just from a journaling prompt.

 Now I either need to make more coffee and work on the revision/new start of Anna, or I need to crawl back onto that couch bed and get a little more sleep. See how my little coffee pot is almost empty?

Until next week’s dirt…

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