July 9, 2010

back from the void

Even though writing and thinking about writing takes up most of my day in one form or another, writing about writing is not always something that comes easily or naturally. Maybe it's because some self-preserving part of me doesn't want to give over even more of myself to something that already dominates my life, or maybe it's because there are already so many wonderful book and writing bloggers that I don't feel compelled to add my voice to the mix. Or maybe it's because so much of working on a novel is a repetitive struggle (simply the daily alternations between emotional extremes of "The writing is going well! Hurray! Life is amazing!" and "The writing is going badly. Everything sucks.") that the documentation of the process is not always a tempting prospect. I'm not sure who wants to hear about it, let alone read about it.

So much for my excuses. Add to the above procrastination, stress, and the usual time constraints. It's hard to believe it's already July. Since January I've served on a literary jury for grants, taught an eight-week creative writing course, finished an essay for a YA anthology about fathers and teen daughters, and went to an amazing artists' colony in upstate New York. And I've finished a draft or two of the novel, too. The life-stuff in between, I don't know where that went.

That's the bare bones recap, and not at all what I sat down to write. Didn't I just finish saying that I don't want to write about writing?

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