Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Reg just called. His flight is getting in an hour and a half earlier than he thought, which means I have to be at the airport in less than five hours. I'm only a fourth through my to-do list. Don't think I'll get in much writing today, which puts me in a bad mood. I am really entrenched in Stephen King logic right now. To paraphrase: write every day, or your novel-in-progress will feel less like play and more like work. I've written 50 pages of Sugar, my young adult novel, since quitting the dreadful R+R. I don't want to lose that momentum, even if I am getting married this weekend. Quitting my job was like dousing myself in cold water. Suddenly, my priorities are clearer. I can't be a writer if I don't finish my novels. Conversely, I can't be a published writer unless I start sending my stories out -- something I'm going to need work on.

The convoluted book I'm reading right now (Seek the Living) isn't helping. I can't tell if it's the language and plot that doesn't make any sense, or if I'm just too scattered to read. The author, Ashley Warlick, wrote The Summer After June, a novel I read before coming to SLC and remember liking quite a bit.

J. and I are getting a windfall of books in the mail, though. I love used books under $1.00. Some of my titles include:

1. Truth and Beauty (Ann Patchett)
2. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
3. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)

Our bookshelves are schizophrenic. Jason reads a majority of male writers, a good deal of poetry and philosophy; I read almost exclusively female writers, mostly fiction, almost rarely poetry.

I'm stalling. I don't want to clean the litter box. I don't want to walk to the grocery store for grenadine. I just want to write. I'm midpoint through my novel, introducing new characters. It's an exciting period. My Anna (main character) is wandering around Honolulu, coping with the alienation of coming back to a place that was once home, but is now altered, a strange mixture of the familiar and the foreign.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home