Monday’s Writerly Quote

Happy Monday!!!

Yeah, did you believe that? But I bet my Monday is worse than yours. Currently I’m standing in a line. And this isn’t just any line…oh no… This is that line. You know which line I mean. The DMV line.

Shudder and weep for me.

But I’m making good use of time, right? Blogging in line. It works. Anyway, oddly enough I came across this quote this morning from Henry David Thoreau:

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood to live.

At first, we probably wouldn’t think of standing in line at the DMV of all places as standing up to live, but it is. It’s really living, because isn’t what we do for most of our lives is wait for something. And if anything can amplify the frustration of waiting, it’s the DMV.

I mean, they say the A/C is on, but we all still feel like we’re standing in front of a hot oven. And forget the flies buzzing around, like something’s gone rotten in here. (I’ll let you know if I find it.) The walls are mustard yellow and taupe and gray. There are a few beauty shots of Utah, likely an attempt to make the wait in line less depressing.

Just a second. Oh, this is new. Now there’s a line you have to wait in before you get to the real line. How thrilling! Well, I’m in the second line now, doing real living.

Point being, for a writer, any moment in life is good fodder for writing. We can make our stories that much more authentic by simply paying attention to our lives.

Now, please, make sure your interaction with the real world does include more than three occasional visit to the DMV. Okay?

Do you loathe the DMV our your country’s equivalent? What moments in life do you have to deal with regularly that you dislike? And those you like? What do you do to stand up and live?

Waiting in Lines

Hello! I’m still alive and kicking, living it up in San Francisco, but currently I’m waiting in line.

Why? I’m 90% certain the TSA stole a t shirt out of my bag. They did leave me a love note that they’d fondled my stuff. Anyway, I finally got tired of using my workout shirt as a pajama shirt sub, especially since I finally used it for its actual purpose this morning, so here I am at Ross with the cheapest sub shirt I could find.

In line.

Sure, lots of variety in this size of store, but an equally proportionate size of wait line.

Being in line, I thought of this video, maybe some of you have seen it.

Anyway, the weather has been great. I like it a little cooler and San Fran in the summer is more than accommodating. I’ve seen a lot of the good sights and pictures are forthcoming. In the meantime, I’m going to head to a late dinner, just as soon as I get out of this line… This is water.