Saturday, July 28, 2012

Let's Try This Again

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I haven't written anything in almost 3 months.

Well, unless you count a few journal entries, the occasional email, three and a half pages of the first chapter of a Young Adult novel, and a short essay I had to submit as part of applying to the Independent Publishing Resource Center. (Those things don't count, but I still seem to be counting them, don't I?)

What I have been doing is reading a lot.

One of several books I've read during my writing hiatus -- Cheryl Strayed's Wild, which is the author's account of hiking 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail (what a coinkydink: I hiked 1,100 miles of the PCT, too!) -- led me back into my old journals.

What's striking to me is how many freakin' times I've come to the same conclusions about myself, and how, each time, as I'm recording the latest epiphany, it seems like new news to me.

Here's something from an undated entry (January 2010?) in a little red book:

"I want to say it, and have it feel right. That's what it is about writing: righting. Not wrongs or injustices. Just finding the balance, not capsizing in the waves of circumstance."