Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer
Happy New Year, everyone! Herewith, three quick things.
1. 2019 Reading-in-Review. Interested in which books I read in 2019? Here’s the list.
2. Work-in-Progress. I ended the year with a semi-complete draft of a new essay. But I have to tell you that I’m kind of lukewarm about it. I hate “giving up” on pieces—but I’m just not sure about this one. (Can any of you relate to this?)
3. The Practicing Writer 2.0. ICYMI, the monthly newsletter went out to subscribers yesterday. Changes are afoot—but the basics readers have come to rely on will remain. Check it out, subscribe, and share!
I can surely relate, Erika. Especially on the fiction side of things.
I am currently finishing up a book containing three novellas and a short story. The unfinished concluding novella has lain fallow since about 2004. One of the other novellas is based on a plot outline I wrote, for a completely different character, in the 1980’s.
I am very thankful that the wheels for this project were recently allowed to begin turning once more.
When I’ve been in the middle of an essay and floundering, actually bored with what I’m writing, I struggle for a time then leave it. What a really good essay often lacks is the true meaning for the piece…there might be lots of interesting material and a bit of narrative thread but what one is getting at, what one is feeling most intensely about the subject, is still underachieved. I have at least a dozen of these, alas
Thank you both very much. The issue here is that the topic is “current-events-y,” so if I want to try to publish it, I should snap out of this funk and act (fast). But maybe this one is just destined to fade away.
I think the current -events-y topic is a good one, or at least a subject I’m always ready to try reading because of my political activism and partisanism, which might limit what interests me but all depends on that opening para, if you can say outright what it is you’re most concerned with and feel is driving you to write about it. What’s so good about your writing is that you have a readership believing in you, at least on this site, so go into it with confidence!