I'm Floundering With My 2023 Goals, But There's Still Time To Get Back On Track

 It's hard to believe that we are almost done with January 2023. Wasn't it just New Year's Day?

Well if you're like me, you had some heartfelt goals for 2023 - especially as it relates to writing. Are you also like me and floundering just a bit in these opening weeks of the new year?

Sure. It's ok to face up to it. It's still early, though. More than enough time to get back on track. One of my goals was to write a first draft of a short story each month - 12 stories by the end of the year.

So.... I still have almost two weeks to flesh out my story for January.

And here is the idea I have been toying with since about mid-December: a middle-aged cook with literary aspirations tries to recreate one of his grandmother's recipes one day at work while trying to make sense of his most-recent failed relationship.

At least that's what I have so far. I'm neurotic to a fault. I have jotted down a good amount of notes, even toyed with a few variations for a first line. But, I've been stuck on a detail: my protagonist's name.

Today was my day off at work. A day off means sleeping in a little, then errands: checking my post office box and visiting the book store. Two of my magazines were in my box: The Writer and Entrepreneur.

I bought eight books at the book store. I can't help it. Today's haul: pigeon feathers and other stories, by John Updike; Independence Day, by Richard Ford; Babbit, by Sinclair Lewis; Saint Maybe, by Anne Tyler; My Heart Laid Bare, by Joyce Carol Oates; The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Poems for Men, Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade, editors; Write Away, One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, by Elizabeth George; and 140 Characters, a Style Guide for the short Form, by Dom Sagolla.

If you want to be a writer, you must read and read and read some more. Can't say that enough. It helps that I love to read. 

What I Am Reading

 I am working on a few stories that reach down into my heritage like shoving your hand down into a garbage disposal to find the clog and hoping nobody flicks the switch and mutilates your hand.

It has involved quite a bit of reading. So... during the last three days, this is what I have read:

Sweet Town by Toni Cade Bambara

The Water Faucet Vision by Gish Jen

The Monkey Garden by Sandra Cisneros

A Dry Drive by Andy Adams

Headed for the Setting Sun by James Emmit McCauley

from Adventures of a Ballad Hunter by John A. Lomax

from Adventures with a Texas Naturalist by Roy Bedicheck

The Portrait by Tomas Rivera

La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta by Sandra Cisneros

Bad Girls by Harryette Mullen

Why Texas Is the Way It Is by Betty Sue Flowers

Social Studies by Kinky Friedman

If you want to share you thoughts about any of these works, please let me know.

To Be A Writer You Must Be A Reader

 One of the habits that might be the hardest to establish if you are aspiring to be a writer is to spend more time reading than writing.

Yes. I said it. Read more than you write. 

I say that because the knee-jerk reaction of a new writer is to just write, write, write. But....

You must read literature to write literature. There is no better way to learn how to write than to read from those writers who have come before you. That especially goes for genre writers. You may love romance, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. 

So, you want to write in that genre.... Then you better read everything in that genre. Study it. Learn from it. 

What have you been reading lately? Is it helping your writing goals?

Dare To Write Despite Every Failure

 You want to write. You do it for a day, a week.... maybe longer. Then, you stop.

I get it. Writing is hard... Very hard.

You compare yourself to the greats: Shakespeare, Hemingway, name your favorite genre author...

We don't compare. But there is hope... We aren't them. We are who we are. And... we have a unique perspective.

So... write about that. Dare to write. Dare to write despite every perceived failure to write which you might believe you have weathered. 

Another Post On My Love Of Books

 I bought a $600 Volvo wagon just before winter storms dumped several inches of snow here in Bloomington, Indiana.

Considering I had spent $500 during the summer to buy a brand-new extra large Schwinn bicycle, I thought the 1999 Volvo was a good buy once I peeped out of my bedroom window the first morning after an overnight snow storm. 

"No riding my bike to work today. Thank God!" The Volvo company was founded in 1927. I looked it up - really, really, really grateful that day.

The wintery weather has abated. My $600 Volvo is still running - despite the arm workout I get every day when I drive it. The power steering is going out. But this post isn't about how grateful I was to have a car during winter. Of course I was. No... this post is about the freedom having a car gave me to drive around my new digs here in Indiana. 

And... more specifically, this post is about how my car allowed me to visit my favorite bookstore: Half-Price Books. 

Here's a little background... Most of my books are in storage in Texas. When I moved to Indiana, I arrived here with one duffel bag of clothes and a backpack with a few magazines, books, journals and pens.

Since I moved to Indiana approximately a week before Covid hit in 2020, I wasn't able to travel back to Texas during 2020. All my favorite books are missing me. And, I have missed them, too.

The first day I drove to Half-Price Books here in Bloomington, I felt like I had returned home. I don't remember how long I spent inside the store. I started from one end of the store and went from section to section scanning book spines, eyeing the displays of featured books and finished at the other end of the store with a stack of books in my arms. 

My biceps, tired from steering my Volvo with the failing power steering, were aching even more from carrying all the hardbacks and paperbacks in my treasure trove of the written word.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations - $3

The ScrewTape Letters - $1

An Incomplete Education  $1

Just a few titles I picked up that day. I spent less that $20 that day. Every book was either $1 or $3.

So now, I have a library in the making. I am reading... on a budget.

For that, I am thankful for my $600 Volvo. 

Now... I can possibly search the stacks at Half-Price Books and add to my exile library a few titles from 1927, the year Volvo was founded:

Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis

The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

Aspects of the Novel - E.M. Forster

At least I can carry all those books now that I workout every time I drive.

Finding Your Voice Again After Life Throws A Monkey Wrench On Your Plans

 It is easier to give up than to persevere. 

But you are better than that. I'm better than that. Despite what life throws at you. I know a little bit about the adversity that can humble even the proudest of human beings. And that would be me.

Proud until I was humbled. Sure... I am to blame for many of my poor decisions... But not all of them. 

I stopped writing when I lost my family. Separation followed by divorce. The creativity stopped. Self-loathing replaced it. Drowning my sorrows in alcohol. My reading stopped. My writing stopped.

Now... here I am... trying to come back. I have loved the written word since childhood.

Yet, I let my life, my circumstances, sabotage my love. Can I rebound? I don't know the answer to that question. But, I am going to try. And, from here on out on this blog, is my journey. 

I hope you will join me - especially if you have been hit by as many fast balls as life has thrown at me.

My voice will ring true once I acknowledge my pain... my suffering... my reality. 

That is the first step towards redemption.

Starting Over: Forgive Yourself For Not Writing

 Today I decided to start over.

It's a refreshing feeling. You know it. Put your failures behind you. Don't forget them. Just stop stressing about them.

Today I let go of the guilt of not writing. Today I decided to write.

I am a writer. I love it. I really do. I love books. I love short stories. I even kind of love poetry - I just can't write it. I love drama. I remember loving to go to the theater and seeing a play - back when we could. Covid sucks.

That is who I am. I am a writer. I must forgive myself for not writing. You must, too, so that you can get back to writing.

Life happens. I got distracted. You get distracted. We are human. I hope I can help you see that we can recover and rekindle the passion we share for writing and the written word.

I hope I will keep writing to this blog tomorrow. If I do, that means I am forgiving myself for neglecting it for so long. It's simply time to write. Time to do what I know I was meant to do... what I know I'm good at doing.

If you need a pep talk, keep reading tomorrow. And if I'm truly starting over and forgiving myself, keep reading the next day and the next day and the next day...