THINGS NOT TO WRITE ABOUT

Blogging is changing me. Writing a new post every day is ... wow ... a huge job, a much bigger challenge than I ever imagined.

As a novelist I never wrote about me. I used things that happened to me --mostly big deal events -- and made them happen to the characters I invented -- the heroines in my novels and the villains.

(Villains are fun. Like "dear best friend" Aileen in Somebody Book I, Installment B, page 39 -- she's a clever, gossip mongering, liar who deliberately seduces and marries the man my heroine loves. Aileen was based on a loving dear friend of mine who was after JC.)

The real me -- not just my love life, my dreams, dancer-strivings, car crash, being booed onstage, those stories, a few months ago were a merely a source -- I called it my secret place. (Take a peek at the post I wrote March 24th --"Secret Place." It's out of date. The past few months of blogging, posting something every day -- I can't do it as an invented character -- I have to be me.)

So what won't I write about?

BEDROOM.
Sex. (It's in my novels, not in my blog) I won't invite you into my bedroom, but I'll tease and bouree (a ballerina's fast move on her toes in pink toe shoes) all around the subject.

DEPRESSION.
My own occasional black moods, my fears about dying, growing old -- I'll tell you how I avoid black thoughts, but I won't blog about them. I've learned to turn them around. For instance, say it -- express what's depressing you in a sentence. Then, reverse one of the negative words. Fears about dying = LIVING. (Try another sentence -- old = YOUNG.) It's an easy exercise. Even if you're skeptical, give it a try -- it does turn depressing thoughts around.

WORRIES and WOES
I make lists. A list helps me. A list shapes an amorphous black mood into small, handleable chores, specifics you can deal with.

So what else don't I write about?

I won't know till I stub my toe on it. Right now in my daily blogging, I push away the fences, open the gates, pull up the window shade and let light in. And say truthfully, clearly, as unfancy as possible -- what I'm thinking.