A writing year

I FEEL LIKE MY life is all about writing these days. And so, why haven’t I posted anything on here all month? Fair question. The short answer is, I’ve been busy doing other writerly things. In just the last couple of days, I finished a new story, did lots of work in my online class, read a piece at a wonderful party, and attended a writers’ mini-conference, part of Litquake.

I miss blogging when I’m away from it, but sometimes there just isn’t the time. If only I could crank these posts out in an hour! But no, I fuss over them. I know what Julia Cameron would say: fuss less. But then I’d end up with a blog with as many typos in it as The Artist’s Way. I love The Artist’s Way—I credit that book with inspiring me to devote so much time this year to my writing—but man, does that book have typos!

It’s hard to believe it was only a year ago that I took the plunge, launching my fiction blog with a sexy, sad short story (on National Coming Out Day, as it turns out, though I didn’t notice that at the time) and started calling myself a writer. Since then, I’ve posted some more stories and a little poetry, I’ve read some of it publicly, and I’ve made good progress toward combining it all into a novel. I feel like my writing has gotten a lot better.

In the past year, I did half a NaNoWriMo (November), went through the 12-week Artist’s Way (January–March), got into the habit of writing at least 1000 words a day (most days), ramped up my editing business, and scaled back my day job to 3 days a week (March). I bought myself a laptop (May), saw my fabulous writing coach regularly, and took 2 great online writing courses—Writing from the Chakras (June–July) and Blueprint Your Book (September–October) and a few writing workshops.

I’m not bragging. We all do a lot of amazing things in a year. I’m just taking stock. But damn, that’s a lot of writing-related living. Best of all, I feel so supported, having made some wonderful connections with other writers in the process.

And so I’ve been posting on here a little less often. Time is loosening its grip on me—I finished a great big editing job a few weeks ago, and Blueprint Your Book is just now wrapping up (Litquake is in full swing, but that’s just a week)—just as NaNaWriMo looms again, but guess what? I’m going on vacation.

Things have been going full-tilt for so long, I am really craving the time away. You may hear from me while I’m in Portugal and Spain. I am going to take the laptop, and I will almost certainly do some writing. I may blog, I may not. We’ll see.