I’ve been writing about running in my log, short little notations and then sometimes longer ones in my journal. I’m hoping that writing more on the topic, perhaps with this blog in mind, will get me out of this funk. This stuck place in my writing career. I finished a book last year and I’ve been in a lot of fear about publishing it. Suddenly, I had to put it out there, find a market for it, face reality about the limited audience I’d written for, find a way to market myself. I haven’t been able to write since.

Sure, I’ve done a few things. Started on a play, then changed my mind and started rewriting that as a screen play, then wrote a few poems because I was in love, then fiddled around with a short story I started years ago and have to admit sucks. Maybe it doesn’t suck, but it’s limited. I finally gave in and met with a grad school crony to talk about it (I’d resisted  “workshop” in any form after being bludgeoned over my dissertation) and she told me what I suspected. There was no plot. No story, really. Okay. What now? No ideas and almost a year has passed. I started a sequel to my urban magic realism (fancy way to say speculative, or fantasy) novel but that just fell dead in about three pages. I’m down to writing goofy little snippets in a notebook from a different kind of “speaker,” playing with narration, I suppose, and audience, and trying like mad not to second guess myself, and I don’t know if that’s successful or not. I’m afraid to look at any of them because they really might suck. But maybe, I keep thinking, the act of writing, the discipline of sitting down and putting pen to page, will keep my art alive, will keep the creative juices flowing, and some day one of these little “snippets” will turn into something. It’s possible. That happened with the book I just finished. It’s only been thirteen years in the making. But hey, a lot happened in those 13 years. I also wrote three plays, directed, performed, went to grad school, taught, wrote that other novel (the one that broke my heart) and here I am. Trusting the process.

I learned through The Artist’s Way to “show up at the page.”  So, that’s what I’m doing. Showing up at the page. A leap of faith, really, writing has been that for many years. It hasn’t been practical, it hasn’t made sense at times to keep going, but it is my passion. It is what I love, consistently. It is what makes me feel alive.