The post after the ALA post
I'm not really sure I can top an ALA post. Especially when it is one about the dog days of summer. And isn't that a cliche? But I'm tapped out and have to resort to pre-made phrases.
I'm in between projects, which means starting anything new seems right now infinitely daunting, confusing, and strangely unappealing. Every idea leads me finally to say to myself...meh.
I guess it is all about filling the well. This is an expression I first remember hearing from Laurie Halse Anderson when I heard her speak at a Rutgers One-On-One Conference. Activities like going out, visiting museums, talking to people are all ways to "fill the well." At the time, I thought this was what people who were stuck, who had writer's block, who didn't feel inspired, needed to do.
But there is another type of well to fill. The kind that runs dry after you've completed a project, or maybe two projects, and you feel like you've given it your all, your soul, everything that you've felt deeply about -- I don't know if I've fully done that. I could do more. But what I've done so far has drawn upon everything that I do know from my own range of experience, and from my own heart. To create anything else from now on (or so it seems) will require me not to dig further but to dig elsewhere, in places I don't know. I have to learn stuff, read stuff, research. In a way, I have to become someone else.
This seems so daunting, esp at the end of summer, when it seems easiest to nap away the time, or check twitter, or shop for underwear.
I'm reading furiously. If that applies to me. My daughter is reading furiously -- she's clocked in about 20+ books this summer. My idea of furious is 4 or 5. But I'm awfully proud of myself. I'm hoping to get in another book or two before the school year starts.
In all the books, I'm looking. The secret answer to that question, what to write next?
For me, it really does start with the person. And I haven't found that person yet.
I'm in between projects, which means starting anything new seems right now infinitely daunting, confusing, and strangely unappealing. Every idea leads me finally to say to myself...meh.
I guess it is all about filling the well. This is an expression I first remember hearing from Laurie Halse Anderson when I heard her speak at a Rutgers One-On-One Conference. Activities like going out, visiting museums, talking to people are all ways to "fill the well." At the time, I thought this was what people who were stuck, who had writer's block, who didn't feel inspired, needed to do.
But there is another type of well to fill. The kind that runs dry after you've completed a project, or maybe two projects, and you feel like you've given it your all, your soul, everything that you've felt deeply about -- I don't know if I've fully done that. I could do more. But what I've done so far has drawn upon everything that I do know from my own range of experience, and from my own heart. To create anything else from now on (or so it seems) will require me not to dig further but to dig elsewhere, in places I don't know. I have to learn stuff, read stuff, research. In a way, I have to become someone else.
This seems so daunting, esp at the end of summer, when it seems easiest to nap away the time, or check twitter, or shop for underwear.
I'm reading furiously. If that applies to me. My daughter is reading furiously -- she's clocked in about 20+ books this summer. My idea of furious is 4 or 5. But I'm awfully proud of myself. I'm hoping to get in another book or two before the school year starts.
In all the books, I'm looking. The secret answer to that question, what to write next?
For me, it really does start with the person. And I haven't found that person yet.