Life Informs Process

So here I am, dear subscriber (singular), apologizing for this very long pause in my posts. The process. I’ll cover a lot of time in a sentence or two and then a lesser amount of time in many more words…

I spent summer months editing a poetry collection as you know from earlier posts I believe. I have had an encouraging response from a New York publisher, details to be revealed as the work comes even more together.

My dog was not well over the summer and into fall but he is doing well now. I wrote but I didn’t feel like blogging. I was in a lot of emotional pain over his illness and I think I wanted to keep it at bay or to make it less real by not going too deep into that sad part of me. I have come to know impermanence, as well as living in the moment.

So life out there has affected my process. I will say informed it, not damaged it or slowed it, just been a big part of it.

Process: Last winter I started putting together a novel using Alan Watt’s 90 Day Novel book. I got through my first draft by late spring and put it aside. I am now well into my second draft, which I started working on again in late December, after letting it sit for some time.

In the fall I applied for some Ontario Arts Council Grants, which I was super lucky to receive and which validated my work as an author. Yes, the money is super helpful, but knowing I was heard, that my project caught the imagination of the Arts Council and of several publishers is gold.

My best hours are between about 5-7 or 5-8 if Hugo doesn’t need a pee, and I don’t have to work at the day job in the morning. Of course I get distracted, yes I look at tropical beach webcams, swimming suit ads, the weather outside or in Barbados or my horoscope, until I step into the world of my novel, the sooner the better.

I want to talk about my actual novel in a subsequent post. So remind me dear reader if I forget! Something about the protagonist being a good actor…