Back on The Blog

I've been gone for over a year.  I noticed my last post was on the 6th anniversary of Jeff's death, and now I've passed 7 years.  A lot has been shifting in my life, and I've not taken the time to document it.

The most important shift in the last year (besides my glorious return to the Bay Area!) is my finally seeing myself as a writer.  Which is why I'm Back on the Blog -- if I am a writer, then I should write, as often as possible.

I completed National Novel Writing Month last November, writing over 50,000 words in 30 days!  I had the seed idea of a novel growing for a couple of years, and had wanted to do NaNoWriMo since I first heard of it in the late 90s.  But year after year, live would intervene, and so last year, I set aside therapy and a few other things, and started writing.  I ended up with a sweeping novel that will eventually be broken into two or three separate novels, about finding ones' self in mid life (your late 40s).  I took December off to get my life back on track and deal with Christmas, then in January, took an Advanced Writers Workshop with famed author/editor/contest judge/co-founder of Left Coast Writers/networker extrodinnaire Linda Watanabe McFerrin which in 8 amazing weeks made me feel like I knew a lot more and a lot less than I thought I did.

A lot more, because I have a natural writing ability that comes easily.  A lot less, because writing is, after all a craft, and there is a lot about writing publish-able work that I have yet to learn.  Linda gives great feedback, and I was surprised at how hard some of it was to hear.  After all, I've been writing for years at work (technical design documents), have never been fussed over the criticism, and thought myself immune to it, but it turns out that when the writing is more personal, it's harder to hear.  But it's all for the greater good, and all for making the work the best possible work it can be. 

When I coded software,I figured out that finishing writing the code is only 1/3 of the process.  No matter how beautiful the code, there are kinks to be worked out, and it pretty much always took 2/3s as long as it took to write the program.  I'm realizing that a similar ratio is at work with writing stories as well.  You write, then re-write and re-write and edit and edit, and then you approch publishability (exept for these blog posts, which are pretty much stream of consciousness).

So I'm maintaining my job in software development (because I've found writing doesn't pay much at all), and will be writing more and more in the future.  So expect to see more here in the future.