writer, block.

It has been so long since I've written anything down that I do not remember how the words go. How do you make words turn into characters and themes and plots and stories? Words are so small, and these things are so large and complex and impossible-looking. I look at the book I wrote, all one billion pages of it, and I wonder how the hell that happened. Where did it come from? How is it possible that it will ever happen again?

and

I don't want to give up writing for pleasure in favor of writing for--well, I still find it a pleasure. But what I do every day is not fiction, stories, books. It's not the kind of stuff that I feel lost without. It is strange, and kind of stupid, that I know exactly what this hollow is, and exactly what will fill it up and I continue to not do a thing about it, to walk around with a hole in me.

From one of my favorite bloggers, saying it better than I could. There is some stuff standing in between me and writing now (go to work. write and edit for money. read for class. go to class. finish final paper for class. obsess about failing next class. garden. bake cookies. ride bus. walk up hill. walk down hill. have lunch with new people. read books. play 629000 games of word twist on facebook. check out yoga DVDs from library. knit baby hat in shape of pumpkin.) but that's not drastically different than what's always been standing between me and writing, and somehow, on weekends and between other stuff, I found the time to write a billion pages of the first book.

My deal is not exactly like the deal of Anne, the blogger quoted above... I have been writing, actually, fairly recently, but it doesn't feel the way it feels when it's good. Some of the items on that list aren't even a tiny fraction as important to me in the long run as fiction writing is -- I know how to fill that hollow -- but the easy words aren't there right now, and that makes me not want to try after a long day. Not trying is less scary than not being able to do it. One of my great writing weaknesses has always been that I need a calm mind and a long stretch of time to get to that flowy clicky it's-just-working feeling, and that weakness is still weakening me, and I am not happy about it.

Ah, but on to the garden pictures, yes? Yes.

I could see these guys peeking out, not so subtly, as soon as I came into the garden yesterday:
Squash blossoms!

They are an amazing color -- golden yellow orange lovely. Aren't fried squash blossoms served as a fancy appetizer or something? I think I might have tried them once.

A tiny, blurry pepper:
He was really nestled down in the leaves and feeling camera shy. Three of the four green-to-red pepper plants have their first fruit (woo!); the yellow pepper plants are much smaller and taking their sweet time.

And finally, a surprise guest:
One of the keepsake tomatoes! It's about the size of a ping-pong ball and again, dug in pretty deep in the middle of the plant. He has a few friends as well -- I hadn't really been examining the regular-sized tomato plants that carefully, because I figured I'd have tons of cherry and grape before the big guys came in.

It's also interesting to note that the rest of my tomato plants are dwarfed by the mystery plants from my neighbor, which are so tall they're almost up to my shoulder. But the keepsakes definitely win for first fruit, so apparently plant size is not necessarily connected to fruit-bearing. Which we knew from the cherry tomatoes, I guess, but I was assuming those were more different from regular-sized tomato plants than other regular-sized tomato plants, which is perhaps an incorrect assumption. You know what they say about assumptions: They make an ass out of you and mptions.