I've been writing in that notebook for The Writers' Way.   It seems tedious the write freely (ramble)  and doesn't leave me time to write to people, blog or any other writing stuff.   
Cameron knows it's difficult.  She wrote: 

                  In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it.

                  I ask you to do this by an apparently pointless process

I call the morning pages.

I haven't seen any great insights in myself or my writing, of course I haven't read chapter 2 yet either, so not exactly giving it my all.   

     I'm reading Five Quarters of the Orange ... by Joan Harris, the lady who wrote Chocolate.   It's marvelously good.

I realize I have three standards when I read a book --

                      1.  I wouldn't read that.
                      2. It was okay, I guess.
                      3. Marvelously good.



 ~~~~I'm not great at writing book reviews, obviously.

     I also recently read Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagan, a story of family fear and humor told via a quite precocious 10 year old.  It was okay, I guess.  Very descriptive & clever, although not deep, thoughtful or tense.
     Took place in 1959, when I was also 8 or 9.  Although it didn't remind me of my life, there were lots of sayings, rhymes, songs, stories etc that I remembered from being a kid.  I enjoyed visualizing the author googling games and rhymes of the '50s and cramming them all into her story.
     Every observation, insight, conclusion was told by the child which made it both interesting and frustrating.


     Five Quarters of the Orange was more literary & had more mystery & complications to it.    It was told by an old lady who returned to the village she lived in as a child.  She similarly  retold her story of months of fear, humor and family but told it as an adult looking back, remembering and discovering.  During this book I had to hold my breath and/or almost cry.
     Parts were very intense and stressful.  The mystery was quite mysterious, with plenty of wait time and slow buildup as facts became known.  
    Also, the mother in Five Quarters reminded me greatly of my mother.  Although that might have been a major cause for my falling into the story so wholeheartedly, it's definitely another whole story.
     It was interesting to me; the two different styles of telling a 9/10 year old girl's story.  I remember extremely little of being a kid.