This blog seems to have begun like a cheap firework: something was lit, shot up quickly, and exploded with a little bit of sparkly stuff for about two seconds. Then nothing–show’s over.

Similarly, outside endeavors–like blogging– tend to fizzle out when you’ve become sick. I spent one absolutely wonderful week attempting to drag my thoughts through my mucus-laden head and be productive at work and home, barely passing at both. My sore throat and clogged sinuses have pretty much cleared at this point, but I’m still hacking up snotty things every time I speak more than four sentences.

Anyways, enough of my status-update– this isn’t facebook, right?

During my stint with the crud, I spent a fair amount of time re-reading a couple favorite books. My eyes were barely able to focus on a television for more than ten minutes without inordinate amounts of watering, but something about looking at a book page was doable. Oh, that’s right– book don’t burn your retinas searing light. That must be it. Anyways, in the middle of one of my favorite books, I realized a few things:

• its author, Margaret Atwood, was alive and well for a 74 year old lady;
• she keeps a fairly busy schedule of book tours, lectures, and interviews (of lots of things, not just about her books);
• responds well to people interacting with her ideas she writes and speaks about.

This led me to have the crazy thought of writing her a letter. I’m a huge fan of her books and poems, especially her speculative fiction, and especially the series that I was re-reading. While writing an author is nothing new– I’m sure authors like Stephen King or Danielle Steel get a hundred pounds of fan mail per week– I’ve never done it. Further, I don’t believe that I have anything to tell her that she hasn’t heard a thousand times before either, and she makes her circles are made up of people and events that I can barely imagine. Nonetheless, most authors expect that their writing will be read by an audience, and most authors–most people, really– like receiving (positive) feedback from things that s/he has done.

I know that I’m not some big-time author (or big-time anything!), but sometimes the only thing that keeps my head up in the day is the remark I received on something I had made or done for someone else. Other times, I may be doing that very thing again, and a part of me remembers how good it felt to hear something positive about it, which pushes me forward just a tiny bit. Now, I’m not saying that my words are going to lift Ms. Atwood up to new heights or inspire her to write her next great novel (although wouldn’t that be nice!) I guess what I’m saying is that Ms. Atwood seems to be more or less human still, and that she seems like a write-able sort of person. Besides, isn’t part of the writing-your-favorite-author have to do with the person doing the writing?

There’s a first time for everything… and you ain’t nobody ’til you wrote somebody, right? We’ll go with that.