Did I fail to mention I was taking off the month of June?
My bad.
I can imagine how indulgent 30 straight days of vacation must sound in this economic climate. Fortunately, (or unfortunately?) my month long break from blogging did not impact my net (or gross) income in the least.
It’s going to be 57-trillion degrees today. I’m sitting outside eating Bing cherries with a copy of Lucky Peach and the Atlantic. Life is literally a bowl of cherries for me right now. (Although, I’m sure after reading Ms. Slaughter’s cover story, I’ll return to my usual feelings of career discontent.)
It’s difficult re-entering the writing life after avoiding it like the plague. Do I jump right in? Tell you about the time I got an IUD put in on a Monday and removed by Wednesday? Why I haven’t talked to my mom in three months? The time I went on a job interview only to find out that the woman interviewing me was a childhood friend of my CEO’s wife? (Yes, she told him I was interviewing. And yes, he confronted me about it.)
Or how about the fact that my husband and I haven’t had sex in over a month? There’s a story.
Sex.
Work.
Cherries.
Today I will hit publish on this quick post. I’ll sit outside and finish reading a book I started two days ago while my kids flop around in their inflatable pool. I’ll watch my nephew while his mom, my little sister, attends an AA meeting. I’ll walk in these Paleocene-Eocene weather conditions because I love the heat.
And throughout the next 24 hours, I will try to remember that what matters most about my writing–why it is so important–is because it is my passion. It is my path to bliss. And regardless of what happens after I put pen to paper or publish a blog post or start another set of revisions, this writing thing is the tool I was given to find my way back whenever I’ve been lost.
For now I’m going to leave you with two things I love most from all that I have read during the past week:
Jeanne Ray worked as a registered nurse for forty years before she wrote her first novel at the age of sixty. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and her dog, Red. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Julie and Romeo, Julie and Romeo Get Lucky, Eat Cake, and Step-Ball-Change.
From the author bio on the back flap of Jeanne Ray’s recently released novel, Calling Invisible Women.
and
I resent the implication, by the way–occasionally found in reviews of my work–that I use writing as a means of coming to terms with my own problems. The fact I that I use writing as a means to coming to terms with my own problems is so obvious that implying it amounts to a form of passive-aggressive griping, like implying that soldiers resort to violence as a means of resolving conflict. If a reviewer really wanted to out me, what he or she would say is, “Mark Salzman uses writing as a means of coming to terms with his own problems, but he’s been at it for a long time and is still writing about the same problems, so he must not be making much progress.
From p. 37 of Mark Sazlzman’s The Man in the Empty Boat, the book I’ll finish reading today.
Late bloomers rule. That is all.
Colonel Sanders didn’t launch his KFC chain until he was 65…after more than one restaurant fail. (I just learned this Friday at my daughter’s summer camp…which was in Louisville, KY, of course.)
I loved Step-Ball-Change. And now I love Ms. Ray, too.
i love that you knew about step-ball-change. i hadn’t heard of ms. ray until i got her book sent to me by Parnassus. It’s the independent book store out of Nashville, KY (that Anne Patchett is a part owner in). they have this great signed-1st-editions club that you can sign up for and once a month they send you a newly released signed first edition. i’m going to blog about it soon because it’s the best club i’ve ever belonged too. (not that i’ve belonged to many.) but they send the books in these delicate pull-string cloth bags that worth collecting on their very own. also, while i’m talking about it–Vivian Swift will be at this bookstore next saturday with Le Road Trip. One of my two favorite travel memoirs (it’s tied for my #1 one spot along with Bobbi’s Finding Me in France).
You’re fine. You are. I took 6 months, or a year, or more than a year, off from writing my book — depending on which lies-I-tell-myself you’d like to believe — and only now can I see it’s the best damned thing I did. Sometimes we have to be ready to say what we need to say.
You sound about ready to me.
And not for nothing, I read parts of 24 manuscripts in June and guess what? When I come to your blog, or even just read a comment you leave somewhere else, your writing, your VOICE, is remarkably better and more original than those 24 manuscripts. You’ve got something special, Josephine. Your voice. And we’re listening.
That’s exactly how I feel, “about ready.” I’m at the point where I know I just have to do it and the motivation will follow (as opposed to come first), like exercising. The Man in the Empty Boat talks a lot about his writers block and the anxiety attacks he suffered around not being able to write (he, unlike me, was on contract and had already received an advancement for the book he kept trying to write. i can’t imagine the stress of such a scenario.) It’s comments like yours that we blog–how can we not feel inspired when we have such dear friends pushing us along?!
I completely agree about your voice. It’s full of humor and personality, and absolutely distinctive.
The Salzman quote cracks me up.
i highly recommend the book–it’s a quick read and perfect for sitting outside, taking in the weather and thinking about life.
I was just thinking what Teri said. You sound about ready to me.
You do have a remarkable voice and what probably makes it more difficult is that you don’t shy away from looking at things in a starkly honest way. That makes it all the more painful and, often, harder to do. If you need time away, take it and don’t judge it. Your path is not like the others. That much is clear.
I’m so happy you understand how important this is to you. Keep at it. Yourself deserves it.
Thank you. And you’re right about the honesty/writing/difficulty connection. you cannot imagine the running thoughts through my head as i drive, shower, cook dinner, whatever. they all start in prose of how i would begin a blog, an essay, a short story; I get to the third, fourth sentence and my inner editor says, “you can’t say it that way,” or “that will surely sound like you’re being the victim,” or “it’s not fair to make them out to be the bad guy.” and just like that the idea gets scratched.
i hit a writers block b/c the stuff i end up with–the topics that are safe–are mostly blah to me. who wants to read something i don’t even have that much interest in writing??
“who wants to read something id don’t even have that much interest in writing??”
Preaching to the choir there, Josey my dear. Some of us are wired to strike the match to see what happens.
No advice here other than to not stop writing, whether it’s here or to yourself (put those journals under lock and key though) just keep going so that your mind won’t have to struggle to remember how. It doesn’t matter what you write, just that you do. The time will come on the good stuff.
Your voice is so strong, you just have to decide what you want to do with it. The rest is cake.
but lyra, can’t someone just tell me what i want to do with it? please? that way, i don’t have to think about it anymore and just follow instruction!