I thought I would write a blog post while my boys played. That is one of the crazier ideas I’ve ever had.

They were not behaving badly. Or at least not very badly. In fact, more and more these days they play so well together. Actually, they don’t necessarily play together often, but they do play in the vicinity of each other. Today after we got home from the gym (yay me), my two little knuckleheads happily entertained themselves while I sat nearby with my computer. And yet, I was unable to complete a sentence.

The little one, P, spends his entire day, every day, scaling things. It’s as if we said “bet you can’t climb up [name impossibly high piece of furniture],” and he said, “I willingly, and with great enthusiasm, accept your challenge.”

And the big one, H, really wants me to play pretend with him. I suck at pretend. Playing pretend is different from spending time in your own head imagining stuff. What? Like you don’t get lost all up in your own imagination.

Don’t tell me you’ve never played the what if I won the lottery game, or spent time working out imaginary scenarios in which life is exactly the way you think it should be, including the part where your books – yes, plural, because your novel and your memoir happen to hit the shelves simultaneously – garner you invitations to all of the morning chat shows. It turns out that everyone wants to hear your thoughts on, well, everything. And then you have to decide whether you should accept an invitation to appear on The View when, in fact, you kind of hate that show and always have. Wouldn’t it be wrong to accept their invite for your own personal gain?

Anyway, sitting with a four-year-old, pretending to teach swim lessons to a stuffed lamb that is clad in a super hero swim costume is not my forte. I am not gifted in the art of pretend.

I cannot blame the children entirely for my post-writing troubles, though. The other issue is that I’m all over the place today. I keep writing stuff that makes very little sense (see paragraph five, above).

I just commented on a post at The Red Dress Club about writer’s block, saying that I often do a total brain dump when I’m blocked. I sit down and write whatever, to hell with grammar, spelling and punctuation. And yet, I find it’s unadvisable to dump my brain into a blog post. Who wants to read that rubbish?

The other thing I do sometimes is walk away. Just walk away and do something else. It helps. For example, while I may stink at pretending to teach stuffed animals how to dive for imaginary rings, located in the depths of a blue blanket masquerading as a swimming pool, I can’t help but notice that the exercise was good for my brain. Getting out of my head – and attempting to access the complicated workings of my preschooler’s mind – is so good for me.

So. There’s one common thread in my all-over-the-place-ness today, and that’s writing. I’ve been thinking about writing in some shape, form or fashion all day. It’s a topic I love to talk about and read about. I like knowing how other people go about the business of writing (this inspires me); I also like knowing about other people’s failures, flops and misguided attempts (this makes me feel better).

So until I reign in my thoughts, I’m going to leave you with some of my favorite books about writing:

:: And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft by Mike Sacks

:: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

:: On Writing by Stephen King

Not to be confused another classic,

:: On Writing Well by William K. Zinnser

I wonder, do you have any favorite books about the craft?

Disclaimers:

I also need to point out that I am not – in any way – being compensated by the authors mentioned within this post. If, however, any of you would like to, oh I don’t know, go to lunch? I am always available.