I’ve always had a strong interest in the composing process of writers. If my life path had gone in a differing direction and fate had intervened, this is where I would have gone, career wise. I did make a stab at this in going on for my Ph.D., but I ended up in the wrong academic arena.

I was told when I expressed an interest in this field that it was passe. It was no longer kosher to say composition and rhetoric. It was kosher to say rhetoric and composition.

My single-minded intensity of focus in relation to my own composing process led to my picking up bits and pieces here and there, from others who were able to make this their area of specialization.

This is not a huge loss, for my knowledge in this area has been beneficial to me. My familiarity with my own composing process has been very useful; otherwise, I might some time ago decided that writing was too difficult and abandoned ship.

I thought about the above today as I began work on my article for Make a Scene, a monthly insert in a local free press paper. The deadline for my article is tomorrow. Actually, I began working on this article a few days ago. What came to mind was the phrase, “I Move Books. Books Move Me.” This was a phrase that the Cordova Public Library had put on a tee shirt. It’s bright green and the image is of Alaskan animals reading books. Pete got the large shirt. I wanted one, but was told that they didn’t have any more.

The phrase: I realized that I could use it as a framework and talk about how this summer I literally moved books, and how I was moved by them, the examples centering around Summer in the Park(s), the books going to the Alaska State Fair.

The other night I wrote a draft on a piece of office paper, in red. It was a very rough draft but important in that I fleshed out some ideas. It was sloppy and had an audience of one, me.

If I hadn’t written this draft, I would not have written anything at all this morning. But I had it in hand as I sat down in front of my computer and began writing. I put myself in the zone, this was out of habit. I usually give myself two or three days in which to revise what I’ve written, but because I’ve been so busy, I didn’t have time to do this.

I wrote fairly quickly, non-stop. Then I revised what I had written. I then passed on my computer-generated draft to Pete who edited it and then sent it on to the newspaper editor.

All day I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders because I had met my deadline, a seemingly near impossible task given all I have been doing lately. If I hadn’t had some awareness of my composing process, this dispatch would be about a different subject.

Next: 213. 8/10/26: Heat Wave