The lifesaving blog, blog, blog

I've discovered my daughter Anne is a talented writer and storyteller (you can read some of her comments posted on this blog....) But Lindsey REALLY pulled me out of the editor's special purgatory this week.

Several of our top editors were out for various reasons, and I found myself being a hands-on newspaper editor, the managing editor, the editorial page editor and the newsroom assistant all on the same day.

I needed an emergency column for the newspaper Thursday night, and I still had four editorials to write. I told Lindsey I was going to let him be my guest columnist this week with his "Lucy" story, but he didn't want to do that. He generously allowed me to rewrite it and use the story of his pre-dawn stroll. (Well, he HAD told it to me before he wrote it...)

It was a real lifesaver. I managed to slam everything out in the time it took Lindsey to take Roux to agility class.

My good friend and mentor Wiley Hilburn taught me that journaling is invaluable to writers for ideas, capturing emotions and recalling significant detail. But I've never had the self-discipline to do it before. For a person who hangs around words all day, writing in your "off" time seems too much like work.

For some reason this weblog stuff is a little easier to handle -- you can journal in a minute and when you're in a pinch, there might actually be something to use in the REAL job.

It took years, but I'm sold now. After this week, I really believe in the value of journaling!