Weeks ago I answered the call to commit to blogging on this site. “It will get me back into the practice of meeting deadlines,” I thought, “and it will be a gentle way to enter the world of blogging, heretofore foreign to me.” But, it’s hard to let go of old friends. Procrastination has been by my side for decades. Her shrill voice disrupted my thoughts every time I sat down to blog. “You don’t have time now. You have out-of-town guests arriving any minute. . . Why not wait until the rambling days of summer give way to Autumn’s more disciplined schedule?” And, worst of all, “Are you crazy. . . you have nothing to say!”

Yesterday I had a mournful email from a friend. Pat and I are writing pals. We met at a writer’s conference nearly ten years ago. At the close of the conference, she suggested that we keep in touch with one another through weekly freewrites. The telephone, paper, and pen are our tools. We talk every week, alternating callers. The caller is responsible for having a topic to write about (a single word or phrase, a passage from a book, a snippet of a poem). Once delivered, we hang up, write furiously, and call back in twenty minutes to share. I now must have as many notebooks as Natalie Goldberg! While mine collect dust, Pat has turned hers into a novel. She has had it workshopped and is searching for an agent.

A few days ago she called excitedly, ready to break open the champagne. An agent was interested. We raised our metaphoric bubbling flutes to her meteoric success. Last night, the broken shards of glass lay strewn across my desk as I read her disappointment. “His cruel words rocketed through me. I am taking to my bed,” Pat wrote.

Pat’s rejection has prompted the posting of my first blog. Here, I figure, the stakes are low. Blogs are a little like our weekly freewrites. They connect us and give us empathetic listeners. I am hopeful that we can generate ideas and ponder questions together — and be there for one another to pick up the broken pieces.