…are making a racket next door. Can’t the gardeners just use a broom? Are leaf blowers prevalent in other areas of the country, or just here in the O.C. where autumn leaves aren’t seen as beautiful but seen as a mess on the sidewalk and yard? You won’t find O.C. kids jumping off swings into piles of leaves because there are none!

I’m really not in a bad mood.

It’s just that Jordan (I’m gonna out you, J., and tell everyone you’re “Sweetness” in the comments section) just wrote to me accusing me of laziness for not blogging lately. But I’ve been working on an essay this last week, J.! That doesn’t matter to J.; he’s just sick of checking back here and seeing the post on the Helen Schulman podcast (he doesn’t listen to podcasts but wants me to transcribe. Uh-huh, right….). I understand, though. When I check blogs and it’s the same old stuff, I become frustrated and if I knew the blogger, I’d do just what Jordan did, and I’d write to him or her and say, Whassup?

Just so this blog post isn’t complete nonsense, I have one discovery for you. As I said, I’ve been working on an essay the last week and when I started the essay, I didn’t know what it was about. I just knew I’d been wanting to write about this thing that happened about 15 years ago. And I had a first line. But I didn’t know where it was going.

The piece started out as a five page sketch, swelled to a 12 piece essay, and shrunk to eight pages, and in the meantime, I discovered what it was about and found my ending. So my tip for you is, regarding essays, don’t wait until you know exactly what it’s about to begin writing your piece. The discovery is in the writing. I love essays and I love discovering along the way what I mean to say.

Okay, Jordan, happy?