I don’t write to be famous, I don’t write to be known, I write because I am and I want to be read. How sad to fill a room with paintings no one sees or play music no one hears. Writing is talking without sound, singing without score and dancing without movement and yet, it is all of them. It is a solitary art conjured from thought and expressed by the need to communicate.

HEAD SLAPS, SPEED BUMPS and LIGHTBULBS, one woman's WTF, oops and ah-ha moments of life.

They were published once, and as every writer knows, once is not enough.




Friday, June 21, 2013

Spinning plates among the pencil trees



Why am I spinning so many plates?

Question: Do other writers spin settings for a table of ten or do they concentrate on just one at the head?
Answer: Of course they concentrate. With a narrowed focus they proceed with finitude and discipline to perfect a performance which can only be perceived as flawless.

Here’s a very honest display of my spinning 10” chipped stoneware:

Column, weekly deadline, am 4 weeks ahead.
Novel #1 complete, 82,000 words, out there, brought back, WTFs the problem?
Novel #2 complete, 78,500 words, full at a publisher.
30 short stories need rewrites.
Essays out the ass, done, polished, a little buffing, click and send
Non-fiction WIP (First year as a newspaper columnist, ‘force and fallout’ compilation)
Novel #3, great American novel, knock your socks off twist. A literary loss if never completed.
Novel #4, unfinished amazing story I can only take time to finish if someone pays me to. Would make a  great movie.
Nonfiction literary memoir/family saga, short version done.
Family, two blogs, posts, comments, FB, QQ’s, full-time job, I ain’t getting any younger. 

I pogo-stick from one project to another. Someone please, tell me what to do, what to focus on. 
Page 13 to 29, Chapter One, The Ambivalent Writer, Betsy Lerner's, The FOREST for the TREES. She personally told me in the last paragraph what to do.

I'm an essayist, God-dammit, I'm a columnist. Thanks Betsy for reminding me.
See, I knew someone would answer my question.
Got any of your own?
Go spin your plates in the pencil-trees.




1 comment:

  1. I can only manage one thing at a time. It's incredibly tedious. I kind of envy your plate-spinning.

    ReplyDelete