I’ve given up feeling guilty for not writing more this summer. There’s just..so much. The summer is really short here, and I feel compelled to be outside as much as I can, as much as working ten hour days will let me. There’s time in winter, those long, long blue nights when the dark falls early and you are trapped inside. Summer is for backpacking and swimming and lying in hammocks. If that makes me not a “real” writer, so be it.
I do have a story simmering in the back burner, and I will get there. The Alaska memoir is temporarily stalled as I decide whether it should be a novel or not. A novel is tempting because it isn’t about me. Does the world really need to know more about me? Maybe not. There’s time to figure that out.
My writing group has also taken a hiatus: Cam the poet has gone back to Colorado to lead dudes on fly fishing trips; the others to be moms and dads or do yoga and ride horses. You have to have more than one thing in your life.
I am sitting outside with a cat curled up next to me, and this is the only thing I have written in days. And I am fine with that.