Hello fabulous folks. Just back from the opposite coast. Being toe to toe with people I haven’t seen since 2019 was wonderful/fantastic/beyond great. My heart was saying Wait, didn’t I just see you? AND It’s been too long (both of those things able to survive side by side given FaceTime and Zoom capabilities), while the orientation part of my brain was shouting what-train-do-I-take-to-get-to…? (Mind you, we were staying out in Brooklyn on the G line, so whaaaa? Had a whole new transit experience.) The post-pandemic city was more evident in certain neighborhoods. We didn’t go to the theater district, but a couple of shows opened the night before we left (I’m looking at you Hadestown, Hamilton, Wicked). The upper east side (visiting a friend’s art studio) had a lot of shuttered stores, while Chelsea and the West Village had a lot of life among the new dining sheds lining the streets. I’ll chalk a lot of that up to tourism eeking back in and the creativity of figuring out how to keep going by building out where the wild things are. Time and its elasticity had me feeling at home while also not sad about being in California.

For the last two days of the trip, we stayed upstate with dear friends whose house has a side porch that I became fixated on as what I want my writer’s studio/space to look like. Open on three sides with lush greenery right outside the window/screens, the sense of both being in the world and removed from it was inspiring in an “I could write here for hours” kind of way. Which of course brings me to the romanticizing of that kind of work.

In the last year I’ve begun to understand more fully what it is to be a writer of fiction. The mix of commitment and realism. While I used to fantasize about having whole days to just write, the reality of doing that is obviously more complex. The frustration of staring out the window/at a wall, working on one paragraph, one page, one sentence for HOURS, then being sure I’ve made it worse. But also the tingle of moving forward and thinking Yes, that works. Time does evaporate when I’m doing what I love.

During one of my amazing catch-up-with-close-friends meals, I got to talk about the difference between journalism and fiction. With the former, when I was on assignment, it was a story either pitched by me or by an editor for me to take on. There was a deadline, research, interviews. The piece becomes immersive and has a structure (word count and flow, tone and voice). With fiction the parameters wiggle and widen. There is a story in my head, no one has asked for that story, I’m just hoping by the final draft (however many iterations that takes) someone whose job title is “agent” will be interested and like it enough to take me and my creation on. Yes, there are general word length rules. Yes, there are actual necessary editorial choices to keep the thing moving, although you can read about a zillion do’s and dont’s and the more I do the writing, the more I can see which ones really are true for me. Listening to podcasts with writers (love How to Fail, because it’s so great to hear about things not working and how authors face that, Write Off—and this one with Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart—is amazing, and In Writing too), reading books from writers about writing (oh my gawd George Saunders A Swim in a Pond in a Rain, the BEST!), checking in with my CBC writer’s group, who are to a one so smart, talented, inspirational, and, finally, having Dennis here to bounce things off of is all amazing. But in the end, it’s solo sailing. Not that thrilling to watch or describe. (How many movies about writers are exciting? Maybe As Good As It Gets nails the misanthropic writer type? There’s a cool typewriter in Barton Fink…)

I hadn’t sat down to work on my novel for the week we were away, although I was thinking about it constantly. What occasionally would clench my heart, make me anxious, was thinking What if I never get back to the rhythm of the writing? Where am I in my revision anyway? What if the muse is gone? Because, you know, no one is waiting on this. And my teaching schedule is ramping up … and … and…. I mostly recognize this as fear. I can feel the itch of wanting to get back and being afraid to fail, even if I do learn how to fail better.

Though I did sit on the plane home and work over my first page for five effin hours, so I obviously jumped back in the water when I had the chance. Another something I read a few days ago by author Jami Attenberg who has a great newsletter called Craft Talk (when you subscribe, the money is donated to a chosen nonprofit/cause. This week: Funds for the People of the Bayou.) was her take on how we mark time and accomplishments. “It’s possible that there isn’t much difference between the end of the beginning and the start of the middle.” I love that because it’s both comforting to see the non-linear bits around a story and how life in general doesn’t track the beginning, middle, ends as clearly as I might have once thought.

I don’t even know how to end this blog except that I have to go get the laundry, because the buzzer went off so I know that’s truly finished.