“My real writing is the stuff I do that takes my
deepest energy, that requires me to slide into that space where everything else
falls away. I picture the space where I
do my real writing as a quiet forest glen where there is sound but nothing I
need to attend to, nothing that calls forth my intervention. It is serene, secluded,
and I am alone there.” ~ Andrea Cumbo
From what I’m hearing, other writers are struggling
to juggle their blogging with their ‘real’ writing. Unknown Jim says his writing
has been misplaced and it’s time for things to change.
His aim is to focus on fiction instead of spending
so much time on social networking. He says, “It’s time to write what you REALLY
want to write about…It might mean blogging less to just blog better…or writing
an ebook, poem, or short story…”
Or memoirs and magazine
articles, which I must return to front burners and bring to full steam once
again. This is why I’m taking a blogging sabbatical for the next several weeks
- although I do hope to drop by and visit my friends on occasion.
In an earlier post, The
Music Within, I quoted Brian Doyle’s reasons for writing. These words bear
repeating here, mainly to remind myself of why I write.
“Because like all human
beings I have an innate drive to leave something shapely and permanent behind
me, some marker or passage through the woods…I’d like to leave several books
behind me so that someday my children will open and read them and think maybe
the old man had a fastball for awhile there.”
In Utterances of an
Overcrowded Mind, Paul Dorset says that 97% of writers don’t finish their book.
I’m in the 3% who have finished one, but little good that did since I placed it
in a closet and forgot about it long ago. But that’s not the one demanding my
attention right now anyway. It’s the memoirs I want my children to read.
What about you? How are you expending your writing energy,
and do you also feel the need to redirect your focus? Is blogging your chief
venue, or do you have other WIP that need attention like some of us?
Linking with Seedlings in Stone
