Someone posted on facebook, most likely a quote from someone else:

If you aren’t the one buying, you’re the one being sold.

I think we ought to remember that. Except, you are ALWAYS the one being sold.

I guess we’d better be aware of that, so we can get a good price.

Is that a Gen-X thing? Is that  thing that the baby boomers wouldn’t be able to hang on to? Well. Cynicism is a way of life, and it’s not so bad once you get used to it.

The gatekeepers are not on our side. The popularity contestst, the university admission letters, the job interviews and the rejection letters. Nobody is your fairy godmother. It’s not a meritocracy, unless the merit being autocracied by your own self.

King of the Hill. Until you are pushed off.

But I’m not interested in tooth and fang. I want something beautiful.

And I am not interested in the gatekeepers and their right to be right.

Who gave them the right? I take it back.

So, I find myself recognizing the Stockholm syndrome inside. Those gatekeepers have infected me.

“Oh…that’s not really good. *I* can do better than that…and I’m no good either.”

No, no. We are all good. Why not?

What is the point of all this judgement? Are we so very fragile that we cannot withstand the horror of a less-than-sublime experiene?

Crappy music is great! if you enjoy it.

Horrible writing? Should we all just cut off our right hands because they offend us with a mixed metaphor or dangling participle?

No. Never. Let the walls fall down.

Yes, there are differences in quality. But we eat Pringles and Potatoes au gratin with oil of truffle. There is room in the world for all of us and all of our growing gifts.

We may have to march around the walls every day for a very long time. To interpret that metaphor, I mean we need to do the work. We need to get good at what we are doing by doing it.

Maybe eventually we will see that we never needed to get the gatekeeper’s help after all. We had the power all along.

Thank you internet. Thank you for letting us know that this whole world is our for the taking, and that we are not bound by the old rules.

If we are going to be sold, let’s broker our own deal.

Stayed up way too late tonight with some old friends. We are rekindling a writer’s group.

There is little in life so precious as a good writer’s group. And this is a good writer’s group.

Ironically, we spoke very little about our writing tonight. We didn’t talk about our writing at ALL last meeting. Nevertheless, it was essential to the writing process that we do this.

See, just coming together and listening and talking with one another made me feel so much more ready to be creative.

To misquote:

If a writer writes alone in the woods, and nobody hears it, did it make a noise?

If I think about sitting down to put word to screen, and I do not have confidence that anyone besides myself gives a damn–I will most likely not sit down to put word to screen.

I have ideas and thought that I *think* about capturing and crafting.

But I don’t do it.

HOWEVER! My group got together to listen and to talk to one another. We were saying to one another ‘Yes! That is worth thinking about! Yes, you did phrase that cleverly! You do have a gift to share with us-with the world.’

We were cherishing one another.

It takes effort to write. To write ANYTHING, be it an opus magnum or a grocery list.

If I don’t value what I want to write, I lose it. All the ideas in the world are nothing to the lost ideas of the world.

It’s worth the effort

he taught her how to spin straw into gold, you know.

I myself have no idea how to spin. I saw someone do it once on a school field trip. THey had wool, a puff of it, and they used a spinning wheel to make it into a thred. The puff of fibers was wound into a string and then the string was wound around a spindle. They loaded it onto a loom and made very rough-looking cloth out of it.

But for that girl, they demanded she spin straw-flax probably because that is what you make linen out of-into gold.

She didn’t know how. I didn’t know how either. I would have no idea.

But the king left her alone in a room with straw and said DO IT!

she had a visitor. Ruplestiltskin, though she didn’t know his name yet.

He showed her how.

and in the end, he taught her how to get a prince for a husband.

except he demanded more than he had a right to. He demanded her firstborn

She was clever enough to best him at his challenge and figure out his name

so ther she was, queen and mother and someone who knew how to spin gold.

She was never asked to spin gold again. I wonder if she spun it anyway?

Hard to say. Because her new family had put her in that unfair position.

I thinkshe spun the gold on her own. I think she didn’t tell anyone, but she spun the straw into gold in between when she had the timeleft over after queen and mother duties were done.

Because you never know when you might need some gold.