It's been one of those gray periods, when the words all get clogged up in my head and won't come out in controlled form. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or too much pressure at work, or the raging sinus infection. I took a class with Doris Betts when I was in school, and she encouraged us to write when we are sick. It puts everything in a different perspective, she told us.

I've never been able to do much when I'm sick, short of feeling sorry for myself. This time I wrote a poem, though, and in the early and late scraps of time I have to myself I try to make it better. The problem is that I don't like rhymes, so I write poetry in free verse, which is unfortunately the harbor for anyone who wants to vomit on a page in short sentences stacked on top of one another and declare it art. Because I have no training, I live in fear that any poetry I write is really just vomiting, only I don't know it any more than the other vomiters know that their poetry is just, well, emotional vomit.

As you can see, illness is the theme today.

The result of all this insecurity is that I rarely write poetry, even though I often think in poetry, and when I do write it I obsess over rhythm and worry that I have no idea what I'm doing. And no, I'm not going to post it here. My creative writing must either have the chops to make it past some other editor, in which case you'll find it in the "Not Non-Fiction" section over on the sidebar (or better yet, at your local bookstore), or it languishes in one of my computer folders mourning its broken luck.

The poem comes from a dream that haunts me, a vivid dream that crept in on me early one morning and left my pillow soaked with sleeping tears. I knew that kind of thing would happen once I started the story, the one about Caroline. Did I mention that I've begun that project, the one all the "walk through your pain" people keep encouraging me to write? Since I'm groggy and sick and therefore particularly disposed to honesty this morning, let me say definitively that right now I don't like those people very much. You know who you are.

I call it a book about Caroline even though it's becoming something beyond her story. Early on I wrote: "Somehow in the years since being defined by death our family has burst forth with life. I am learning that for every broken place in my heart God sees fit to send a child with sticky fingers and a lilting voice to mend it." I didn't want it to become another I-lost-my-child-and-oh-God-it-hurts-but-Jesus-is-helping-me-through-it story. Thankfully it doesn't look like there's much chance of that, though I have to be constantly vigilant against the melodrama embedded in my genetic code. Instead it's something much more . . . maybe real is the right word.

Perhaps one day you'll get to judge. For now it's just an accumulation of memory and interpretation, and I'm clinging to the belief that some good will come from it.

Well how about this for a post. I tell you about two things I'm writing, and I don't let you see either one. They say disappointment builds character, so perhaps you can take solace in that. You're so kind the way you tolerate my little bursts of narcissism disguised as self-deprecating banter. Come to think of it, I've seen disappointment build resentfulness and depression much more than I've seen it build character. So watch yourselves.

Since I don't have much yet worthy of your reading attention, and this is the season to curl up with a good book, let me recommend a story I am thoroughly enraptured by: Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. You can read a delightful interview with the author here. This is what storytelling should be, and the readers among us need to support authors like this.

End of public service announcement, but don't stop here. Go read something lovely today.