Have you noticed how long it takes not to do something? I have always known that it takes me much longer not to write a play than to write one. I think that's still true. I would write a play in 3 to 4 days, after weeks of not writing it. In the month of October, from the second to the 28th, I wrote a book, after not writing it for 6 or 7 years, longer. Now the key phrase to all this is FIRST DRAFT. Many more writers than I say that writing is re-writing. Just write. Just do it. Then re-write. Most writers who comment on this also say they have to cut a lot. It seems when they do start writing they hemorrhage and can't stop flowing. I don't do that, probably because I take so long not to write. I do find that writing the first draft is like gouging out my bone marrow, not that I've had my bone marrow gouged out but it sounds pretty thorough and deep. My first draft is a distillation of what I've been thinking, very tight, very condensed. I have to pry it open to rewrite, slicing with a razor blade, inserting with tweezers. How can I use metaphors like that when I use a computer and there's no such thing as cut-and-paste? That's where paper comes in. I print out drafts in different colours of copy paper so I can keep track of their chronology and see in colour where I came from. Once it's on paper, I can cut and paste- well, invisibly- tape it - and it gets to be like a patchwork quilt with its different colours, only it's paper, of course. (Who said it's a paperless society?) I learned that colour-code trick from a report on Jacqueline Susanne's writing routine. I would never have pegged her as a re-writer. The point of all this at the moment is that I have not yet written my generic letter for the season. I'm still not writing but I'm getting' there. Soon.

I'm having a very fiddley day, getting lots of little things done but not feeling that I'm accomplishing anything. Uppermost on my list of priorities is my generic letter, long over due. I began writing a letter summarizing the past year as most people do at Christmas time. They got tired of writing the same news over and over again to former neighbours, old and distant friends, new and possibly lasting acquaintances, teachers, aging aunts and uncles, perhaps an estranged sibling, and so on. Modern technology made it possible to write the letter once and then send copies to the list of people with whom one had to be jolly and informative. once a year. Some of the letters turned out to be bragging accounts of brilliant children, others contained more information about Venezuela than one cared to know; still others read like medical prognoses. Whatever the content, the letters took care of the List for another year. Add a scribbled note, pop it in an envelope and be done with it. I did it, too, and called the letter generic: one size fits all, covers most situations, condenses one's year to a page or two. But when I realized how useful it was, I began to write a generic every two months or so, to cover my activities and to inform friends about what I was doing and thinking. Some times. Anyway, i write five or six generic letters each year now, and the one I must do today, if possible, is my Christmas generic. I owe it a few months and it's your fault because I'm blogging now. Blogs, however, do not have the same content as generics. But generics can surprise one. I'll let you know if something good comes up. (I have so few blog-readers,they're probably on my Christmas List. I'll try not to repeat myself.)