Right Now
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I have been finishing corporate projects. Dumping old files from cabinets. Taking books to libraries. Fixing a split roof. Renovating a laundry room. Painting doors. Taking clothes to Good Will. Mailing gently used textbooks to Amazon.com. Rearranging my son's room so that it actually accommodates my son (he may be a lot like me, in many ways, but my minimalism flares against his I-may-need-that-laterism).
I have been preparing to teach high school writers all day tomorrow, within the shade of Chanticleer. I have finalized my course description for Creative Nonfiction 135 at the University of Pennsylvania, next spring. I have been creating two piles of things—one to take to New York on Thursday for the BEA (table 29, 3:30, among so many other wonderful scheduled interludes), and one to take on Friday, for the Book Blogger Convention.
I have been dreaming of horses.
Next week, in the quiet of a clean, swept-through house, in the reprieve of just two remaining corporate projects, I will begin again my work on Small Damages, the novel inspired by southern Spain. It is infinitely close, two months or so away from being right. I will not try to write it in snatches. Not this time. I know what it must be now. I won't be afraid of its own emerging will. I will write it quietly through.
5 comments:
I wish my I-might-need-this-laterism was tempered more by our matchbox-sized city apartment. My mother-in-law can toss things, organize things, get things accomplished with the best of them. I admire that and wish it was learn-able by osmosis. I'll trudge along the hard way, weighing all the old trinkets in our household carefully against a series of faint memories.
I hope you have a good trip and good writing when you return.
Hello Beth. My first visit to your blog. I had no idea that you were not only a writer, but a published author!!! I've read one fictional book in my 63 yrs I'm sorry to say. Since that one read, I was unable to return to fiction. I became so engrossed in the characters,I couldn't lay the book down until I had finished the last page. I decided no more fiction for me.
However, after three decades, I've been leaning more toward fiction. Recently, after watching one of my favorite movies, The Prince of Tides, I decided to read it. Pat Conroy has an art with words - unbelieveable.
My writing instructor has been urging me to read a few memoirs since that is what I write. I first read Pat's memoir and then his bestselling book, The Prince of Tides. It was exhilerating, so I may return to fiction.
What a delight to view inside a writer's life. It really has been a breath of fresh air reading your blog. With a family to care for, your early morning writing, and your engagement schedule, you have managed to maintain an orderly life in spite of it all.
I have added you to my blog list . . . and I had ordered one of your books. Thank you dear for being so forthright as a writer and how you maintain your lifestyle.
Oh, peonies! Sunlight in your office! Southern Spain. You live well, Beth. Lovely.
That singular line, "I've been dreaming of horses"... it's taking me away to your world right now.
You are unbelievably strong. Carrying that rocking chair in the heat of July, nine months pregnant... wow. The thought of myself potentially doing the same makes me cringe, but I'm in awe.
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