writing
Still Here, Still Writing
If there’s an abiding theme of my blog, it probably has to do with how uneventful a writing life is most of the time. When a book comes out, there’s a bit of a hubbub, but that happens once a year or two. In between times, the work largely involves sitting on a couch with my fingers typing and deleting, sentence by sentence. The milestones are small and marked in tens of pages or small aha!s. Sometimes, after several months, I reach the end of another draft, but that… Continue reading
Writing Is Like Spring
Spring is a season of setbacks and waiting, with snow still arriving in April and trees barely budding, no matter how often we look to them, expecting more. Yet, like with writing, the days add up, and inevitably we’ll have to reach true warm weather and the familiar explosion of green.
I have, happily, reached the point where I have a complete first draft of my latest novel, and I’m onto revising. Every time that I work, a little more progress adds up, progress that I can actually see by… Continue reading
Various Journals
I first began keeping a journal in seventh grade for an assignment in my Humanities class, and I’ve kept one pretty regularly ever since. These days, I have four journals that all serve different purposes.
- My nightly journal is a paper Sierra Club weekly calendar with fairly small spaces, just enough to write five lines of prose in small script. I use it to reflect back on the events of the day and any highlights. It gives me a sense of completion and personal significance, like my day mattered to… Continue reading
A Bit of Honesty about the Uncertain Path
Let me share a little secret with you. I don’t always know what I’m doing. I lack reliable systems for writing a novel or growing as an artist or taking my work to the next level. A proper path, pattern or school doesn’t exist for writers like me. I’m stuck with training myself.
What I do is get up each morning and keep working, and sometimes, it really doesn’t get me anywhere. I recently abandoned a novel I’d been working on for half a year because I simply could not… Continue reading
Writing Space Within
The labyrinth at Hammonasset State Park, January 2018
I came upon a haiku I wrote while I was working on the Birthmarked trilogy, and it felt like a message to myself across time. It exactly captures the sense of my mind opening up with new space while I’m writing, and the doubleness I feel when my characters come alive.
Why I Write
Where Gaia calls one
side of me to the other
the wasteland opens
Writing Over the Holidays
Holidays are great. I love the extra time with family, the colorful lights, the music, and the good food. The fun certainly involves a change in routine. Some people who have vacation over the holidays hope to work more on their novels, while conversely, people who write for a living might find their normal work time gets squeezed. In the past, I’ve had major deadlines of January 1st, and the mix of writing pressure and fear of disappointing my family has been grueling. Even without a major deadline, finding a… Continue reading