Grist for the Mill November 6, 2018 I intended to have a blog post up last week, but life got in the way. I got called for jury duty. I spent several days last week sitting in a room with a hundred other people, reading and snatching bits of time to write longhand between trips to the water fountain and the bathroom. Every now and then the head bailiff would come into the room and call a list of names to be prospective jurors. One morning, they called me. I trooped into a courtroom along with a number of other people to go through the voir dire process, which determines if a person has any biases that might affect the trial one way or the other. Then the selection of the actual jury began. In the end, I was not picked and was sent back to the waiting room, where I sat the rest of the day. On Thursday afternoon, all prospective jurors were finally released for the week. And like that, I was done. Most people would see jury duty as a massive pain in the neck. I didn't. Don't get me wrong, I would much rather have been home with a cup of coffee and my laptop and the couch upon which to take a nap. I would have preferred not to have irritated my bad back with hours of sitting in padded (but somehow still uncomfortable) chairs. I was glad, though, for the experience. I made notes--not of the details of the cases or the questions we were asked as prospective jurors--but of the sights and sounds and smells and my feelings in and out of the courtroom and waiting room. On one hand, my weekly word-and-hour count was lower than I liked but on the other hand, I gathered valuable experiences and materials for future writing. I write a lot about the act of writing, but part of being a writer is a matter of attitude. All experience, be it positive or negative, is worth observing and making notes upon. Have a fender-bender on the way to the store? Once you've exchanged insurance info and everything is taken care of, pull in to a nearby parking lot to jot down how it felt and sounded, your thoughts and emotions during and afterward. Get a new puppy? Play with them and have a good cuddle, then sit down and describe the warmth and smell of the puppy's skin, how your heart melted when it wriggled a little deeper into your lap and fell asleep. Then keep those notes somewhere safe, where you can pull them out years later if need be. Life, for a writer, should all be grist for the mill. (c) 2018 by Andrew Gudgel email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com