Since I decided it would be a good month, it has been. I know there are plenty of people who get cranky about the idea that our positive attitude can affect our lives...I have, in fact, been one of those people more times than I can count. I mean, there's nothing more aggravating than just wanting to indulge in a little knee-deep unhappiness brought on by nasty bosses or surprise bills or incorrigible members of one's family and to have someone say to you, "Buck up, champ" or one of thousands of patronizing slogans.

In fact, I find I can only buck up when I tell myself to do so, and mean it. Why I can make myself mean it sometimes and not others is a lesson I haven't quite mastered.

Anyway, in this pollyanna daze of goodness I'm feeling I've finally struck upon the kind of writing I most enjoy doing. I mean more than anything I've ever written before in my life. Well, except maybe when I was a wee child. It's so much fun that I actually awoke this morning excited...too excited to even do my stretching exercises...and spent two and a half hours writing. Now, for those of you give a darn about these aspects of my life enough to have paid attention to what I say here...I usually only have about one good hour of fiction writing in me a morning. I'm not one of these write all day types--unless you count all the rest of the writing I do, and that is not always fun (though in its own way, satisfying).

But I'm not going to tell you about it yet. Because I find that really lets the air out of my sails (I really would like a better cliche than that one, but I'm strapped for 'em). I'm just grateful to know my imagination can still take surprising detours. That the pressure I've worn willingly on my back for the last decade to write a certain kind of thing can now be let go.

I can write this wonderful, wonderful stuff in oodles--having fun as I go--no matter what comes of it.

***
On a note of proof re: positive attitude...it occurred to me this afternoon just how large a shift you can induce by changing how you think/feel. For instance what was getting me down these past few months was that my beloved cat is gone; I was unhappy and lonely and friendless (except for Laura!) in this town; I felt as though I had no writing community. And those conditions are precisely the same this month, and even more so yet since deciding to feel better about it all...I really do feel better.

Oh...in other trash and tabloid news (no, I'm not revealing what really killed Anna Nicole Smith)--I have a new television addiction thanks to Netflix: House, M.D. I have a very platonic crush on Hugh Laurie (no worries, honey!)...I mean I love hisacting as crotchety diagnostician Greg House. I'm slow to the uptake, I know. The other actors all pretty much suck (well, they're growing on me), but he carries the show. Gotta have my stories!

JPR