After mentioning literary magazines in my blog post yesterday, I decided to go out and visit a few of the online literary magazines. It seemed like every story I stumbled across was about whiskey and dope and the misdirected phallic energy of some depraved youth aspiring to be a writer. Did I find that style of writing more interesting when I was younger? Have I just become a bit more stodgy in my old age? Perhaps.

Yet I have to wonder if writing about decadence is just the easy way out. Give people vicarious cheap thrills instead of trying to write something at the same time more mundane and more meaningful.

I look around my cluttered office for ideas. The pencil sharpener almost full of shavings, the empty yoghurt cup. I hear a load of clothing in the drier tumbling in the drier downstairs as a couple blankets that our neighbor’s dog peed on waits in the washer for their turn. I remember seeing a convertible driving by a church with a statue of the Virgin Mary in the passenger seat. I wonder what that was all about. Mostly mundane, but meaningful?

On the way home from a town committee meeting, I glanced at a bright star in the darkness, perhaps a wishing star. I’ve written about those nameless waiting wishes before. Perhaps it is simply wishing and waiting for words to start flowing. Perhaps it is wishing to see the Aurora Borealis which has been getting good headlines recently.

It is still early, but I am tired, and my linguistic work-out of the evening feels strained. It feels as if I’m having to work hard to coax the words out this evening. It may not make for the best reading, certainly not for the titillation of the young drug addled youth tearing up the city, but perhaps, by continuing to put one word after another I can become more adept at turning phrases and finding interesting ideas worth pursuing.