Oh Alaska! Why can’t I quit you?
I didn’t want to write about you again. I wanted to write a novel, not more about myself. But for some reason, I keep coming back to you. I’m bringing chapters to my writing group, and when I finish reading there is silence. And not silence in a bad way. It is writing itself, this memoir. I can barely hold on to the reins.
For those of you keeping track, I now have three long projects. The fire memoir is still out in the hunt for an agent. I need to get going on that. This project is about half-finished. And there’s the novel, THE GEOGRAPHY OF WATER. This is coming out in September. I also had an essay accepted for PERMANENT VACATION, an anthology of working in the National Parks (the Eastern volume) which is due out in 2016.
“You’re on fire,” the poet said at our last writing group meeting. I am. I’m going to ride out this memoir. Maybe it will turn into a novel. Maybe it will stay a memoir. Who knows? I guess I’m not done with Alaska yet. Will I ever be? I don’t want to be one of those writers who is in a niche, whose books are all the same. But sometimes you just have to go with it.