Monday, November 5, 2012

A Lonely Place Apart



“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?  





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