a cold sun is setting in the mountains to the west, and it's snowed about three inches, which is generally considered good around here. the rain washes off, they say, but the snow sinks in and replenishes the dried up waters beneath. to me, it's good that i'm not forced to drive around in it; it's cold enough so that the snow has turned to ice and doubtless made the mountain cliffs a little dicey. but school is all at home these days, and we don't have to go anywhere if we don't want to.

i started a new project, which is to type an old account of a life lived in the late 1800's on a farm that i am writing about. so this would be my great grandfather's younger sister, youngest of six, on a farm in wisconsin, near black river falls. then they moved to south dakota, so i'm interested in that part too. i realize it gets more into her older life, which i'm not really following, but i'll put that in the book too. it's history, and it's family.

one thing i've found is that mediocre writing runs in the family. that is, none of us ever made it. but we at least got our feelings out on paper, and they're there, so we have something to chew on now, a hundred and forty years later. it's really remarkable. and some things like wit and subtle suggestion, those things run in the family too.

i've concluded that i'm mediocre, because i've tailed away a little, and just don't even feel great about what i do sometimes. i've been doing this blog, for example, for years, and i've always just loved writing away on it. but feel inspired to write what i know is really powerful? not really. that comes occasionally now, but not with the passion i had at the beginning.

it would be possible, i think, to get in on a kind of writing where you wake up in the morning and just want to do it. when i do novels sometimes, that happens. i get about halfway into it, though, and i'm mired in a general lack of plan or lack of organization. and so i have like three novels, half done. and i'm not even sure i could go back and finish the first two.

they talk about writer's block - i don't really have that anymore. i can always write here, and i can always write something. but i hope this blog is more than that to you - i'm not even sure why people check in to find out what's going on in the inside of my mind. i can tell you this though. it's a record - a living record - of a drift back toward mediocrity, or a kind of floating in a murky sea of mediocrity. it's my life record, so i'd like it to be a little more than that. but if you don't know me, why should it be? it's just writing, and with no caps no less.