I've spent thirty-odd years trying to find a cohesive plan for the summer months. Preferably one that survives through the end of June. My father engendered in me a lifelong desire for stability: a lawn to mow and sweet tea to drink. I've spent most of my life wondering how he managed to pull that off, and only slowly realizing that it probably wasn't as easy as he made it look... or at least as easy as I remember it looking.
Memory is a tricky thing and kids really don't pay attention anyway, so childhood memories of our parents are particularly unreliable. That's not dad's hammock, by the way. Dad didn't do hammocks. That's my hammock, and a woefully underutilized lawn tool it is too.
Anyway, this summer has been a study in plans collapsing at first contact with the 'enemy'. And the enemy (as always) is time.
While two extended dance sessions with the American healthcare system have given me unprecedented amounts of writing time, I funneled that time into several more short stories than I would normally have produced and the early completion of my current WIP.
I feel like I've spent the last two months disappointing people, pulling out of commitments as more and more of my summer plans unraveled. I even had to pull out of a play I was really looking forward to being in.
Last year, I posted here 45 times in April and 37 times in May, in spite of extensive traveling. This year, I didn't go anywhere and posted 12 times in April and 9 times in May. Of course, this time last year, I wasn't on Twitter yet, and much though I hate to admit it, 140-character brainfarts have been easier to shoehorn into my schedule than the longform blog posts you may have come to expect from me.
My apologies to my loyal readers.
Everyone is healthy and the plans for the rest of the summer are tentatively back on track (resists urge to knock on wood). And, as I said, the first draft of my novel is done and I have a backlog of short stories to mail out.
Going forward I am committing to updating this blog at least three times a week.
At the moment, it seems logical to make it Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Please expect new material on those days, or follow me on twitter for shorter thoughts and notices of blog updates. As always, interstitial material will happen as it occurs to me.
Note: This will mean that there are more 'slice-of-life' posts among the extended thoughts on the writing process, but that's what this blog was originally intended to be anyway, so I hope that won't lose any of you. There will also be more snippets of my current WIP as a bonus.
I will be at the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference again this year: July 22-25th.
I'm really looking forward to Andre Dubus III's keynote address, as well as talks by Lisa Gardner, Elizabeth Lyon and the always entertaining CC Humphreys. The PNWA conference is just huge, far larger than the space allotted for it, and I'm looking forward to their plans to move to a larger venue (next year, according to the rumor mill) but for the time being, I shall arrive early to grab a seat and enjoy bouncing through the halls with my fellow Pacific Northwest wordsmiths.
I hope to see you soon.
Scott
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Pages to Type is a blog about books, writing and literary culture (with the occasional digression into coffee and the care and feeding of giant robots).