One of the reasons I burnt up my book was that it was taking me away from my chickens. It takes incredible focus to keep 225 pages in my head. One side effect is that everything else starts to feel like a frustrating distraction: Captain Daddy, my paid writing assignments, the laundry, my taxes and…
Strange things happen once I start to edit my manuscript. 1. Excuses slip away. Not enough time? I steal time. From chores, from writing assignments, from my chickens. Even from cocktail hour. Not enough motivation? There’s too much. I can’t focus on anything else. I work on my book all of the time. When I…
Simply mentioning my book for the first time in months set off an internal maelstrom capped by complete panic in the grips of which I considered quitting writing and getting a job at the mall. This reaction would be amusing if it weren’t so predictable. Since the first, seamless, innocent draft, the thought of editing…
I haven’t actually worked on my book in months. I rewrote the proposal last September for a consult with an editor. That’s the closest I’ve come to delving in since those knee-jerk edits right after the bonfire. I’ve needed that time; to digest, to recover. After all, the whole point of setting fire to the…
I wish I could say that my local creative community was always a bastion of support and collaboration. Instead it often seems like the cattiest of cocktail parties, at which everyone is full of compliments until you walk away. I suppose nastiness is everywhere. If we writers were moles, the predators would be hawks and…
Six months ago I sat down and banged out an essay about my grandmother. It came easily in an hour or two, the fluid culmination of thoughts I’d had since her death nine years ago. Horizon Air picked it up and ran it in their January issue. I could not have predicted the response. Total…
“Blogs are dead.” This statement of doom was uttered by one of my writing-group cohorts at a recent meeting, roughly two seconds after I announced that I had started one. Naturally, blogs are dead. This is the story of my life—the thing I finally catch on to has already passed the cool kids by. By…
Last week I paused at the supermarket and selected Valentines for the chickens to distribute to their fellow preschoolers. After passing by innumerable boxes emblazoned with mainstream cartoon personalities (likely to please the chickens, but make me gag), I discovered cards emblazoned with fish—as you tipped the card around in your hand, the images moved…
Yesterday I submitted three essays to magazines. Last week, I submitted another to a contest. It’s amazing how after all of this time the submitting part of the writer’s equation still feels so great. Even though cognitively I know that the odds are stacked against me and that the most likely result is dreaded rejection,…
“Explain yourself,” my step-father intoned from the driver’s seat as we traveled to the north shore of Oahu. “Justify your existence!” He snickered wickedly. This is his idea of small talk. JB is cursed with an existential preoccupation. He takes stock of life regularly—his and everyone else’s. What have we accomplished? What will we leave…