the slacker returns

you know, sometimes i forget i even have a blog. huh.

i got a comment (omg, i never get comments!) on my post-nano entry and i thought, hey, it's been a while.

like 3 months. geesh.

i think it pretty much took me all of february and march to get back into the swing of everyday life. in feb. i committed to doing 750words.com every day, and i did it, and i haven't been back since. oops, i think i killed my initiative on that.

on the plus side, regular writing is happening occasionally. i still get the odd good idea for my 2009 nano*, which goes into a file and sits for months until i get another good idea. it's slow going. i've totally accepted that it will be a major re-write. i'm actually excited about that. i just have no attention span.

The 20k word summer project (i say these things like anyone is reading, never mind actually keeping track of the shit i do) has re-emerged. a few months ago i started re-writing it and then for no good reason i stopped. i think i lost conviction in my plot. this happens to me all the time- i start to worry that it doesn't make sense, or it's just not good enough, and rather than keep writing to see what happens, i give up. i need to remember not to keep doing that. because when i go back (like i did with this project) i usually realize that it's not actually that bad. i'm still stalling out on it, but the intention to work on it is there. that counts, right**

i still have no illusions that i'll ever be a published writer. ok, well, that's not entirely fair. i mean, i have a short published in an anthology, and another (most likely) this year (and i'm co-editing that anthology, which is pretty cool, and a topic for another day). but a book with my name (and only my name) on the cover? yeah, it's not looking likely. and i'm still okay with that. because for me, writing is more about proving that i have ideas in my head that are worth writing, and that i can get them from brain to page with my meaning and intentions intact. once i master that, i can worry about what everyone else thinks.


*the 2010 nano is in the junkyard, waiting to be scrapped for parts. it was never meant to be, i guess.

**it totally doesn't. that's just an excuse. i'm lazy and unmotivated, that's the honest truth of it.

i'm still a writer

so i didn't write a damn word for over a month. between holidays and family and traveling and getting the kids back into school, it fell right to the bottom of my priority list and stuck there. the funny thing is i didn't even feel bad about it. i used to always beat myself up when i let any of my regular activities drop. i replaced my writing with knitting, and spinning (oh i bought a lot of fibre on vacation. oh it's lovely, but that's besides the point). and one day i said 'gee, maybe i should start writing again.'

and i did.

and it sucks mostly. and i don't think that's actually a change from the usual. i know i'm capable of writing well, but my best stuff has either been heavily, heavily edited, or a product of some bizarre divine intervention or something. i have two pieces featured in an anthology put together by the Hong Kong writer's circle, (http://www.hkwriterscircle.com/ there's a little bit of info on the publication there. i think it will be available to order internationally sometime soon.) and they are perfect examples of both. my longer piece was edited, peer reviewed, re-edited, and scrutinized to within an inch of its life, and i'm still not totally happy with it.

my second piece is all of 218 words, what they call postcard fiction. not because it at all resembles something you'd write on a postcard, but because you could fit the whole thing on one without any trouble. this piece i wrote at a workshop, longhand even, and i think i changed two whole words between the initial version and the final, published one. and it's still my favourite thing i've ever written. 218 fecking words.

i'm going to worry less about writing quality for a while. i'm also going to focus less on the length of the pieces, so i'm not obsessing over whether i'm writing something that could become a novel. i'm just spitting out ideas, and if one snowballs and turns into a story, then great. if that story could be expanded upon, also great.

i'm not setting myself any lofty goals. i'm just going to write. and i feel good about that.