Sunday, May 27, 2018

summer goals

People can debate back and forth forever  on writer’s block and if it is real, or how to cure it. One group of writers insists that if writing is approached like a job, and one writes every day, even if what they produce is garbage, that that “Shitty first draft” is infinitely better than having produced nothing. At least a bad draft can be improved on and polished. But even polished and fossilized shit is still just shit at the core is the counter argument.

I’m not sure it matters when after months of not writing, I have nothing but a lot of Facebook posts, and if I could have pushed through and written three books in that time is no longer relevant. I didn’t.
What might matter is the future. A school year is ending and the greater freedom of summer beckons with possibility. This year my husband is retiring as a music teacher after 29 years, and transferring to a year round, General ed. teacher at a huge penitentiary. So no family summer vacation plans. If I do as I hope to, I will discover if I am capable still of the drive needed to finish a novel. Yes, I’ve done it four times before, but this one is its own beast. Im not sure yet that I can tame it into submission while spending time digging out twenty years of clutter from the unused rooms of my house to accommodate play space for grandkids, and also playing with those grand grandkids. 

I just hope that when August comes, and a new granddaughter along with it, that I have figured out the many aches and pains of my rheumatoid arthritis and found a happy medium where I can be productive as a writer, and involved as a grandmother. 

WISH ME LUCK