Clearly writing this novel, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB, has wiped the floor with me. I haven’t worked on my new poetry manuscript, thoughtfully blogged, wittily tweeted, or amusingly updated in … let’s just say furlongs of seasons. I’m trying to pick myself up off the floor of a rigid and focused writing routine that produced a 416-page, carefully revised manuscript over a period of years. I’m trying to remember the carefree writer who could take a whole morning to envisage the newest incarnation of a poem or muse on growing up seaside in southern California — a blog just for the fun of it.
Instead, I have become this driven person chained to a book. Don’t get me wrong, I love my book and miss working on it, as I now have turned it over to A Higher Power (by that I mean the publishing professionals). I find everything in my writing trunk half-done, partly forgotten, a bedraggled muse adjusting her crown of brambles and berries and wildflowers as she climbs out of the box glaring at me.
But I did review a book — stay tuned for a link when it goes live — and I’ve read a few. You could say I’m resting in the steam and settle after the train has arrived at a station. Glad to still have my fingers on a keyboard, making some kind of word music. And to have written this today.
Don’t you feel like writers should get an all-expenses-paid summer by the sea, every summer? Yeah. This sea. Mediterranean. Portovenere, where I might partially set my next story.
