While I’m reading rabidly on vacation, I haven’t put much in writing other than blurb for a November workshop on narratives writing.

Writing about writing workshop is hardly writing. I ought to be travelogue describing my rapture with the lower Talent, or Valley View, countryside outside Ashland, Oregon. Or writing into the meaning of impulsively texting my realty agent back home about how much he could get for my house today since a 12-acre one-owner 40 years old home up the street is for sale. One of my favorite views, down the pasture valley in front of this home. And I could tell Mr. Chapman’s life story he gave me yesterday, leaning on his weed loop out in the rows of beans and corn in his manicured vegetable garden. About being on his own at age 9 and leaving Kansas, coming to Ashland and working on a dairy. Now selling the home where he raised four kids and sent them off to college.

There’s something going to catapult me into the world of retirement and a house I can afford, i.e. paid off, so that I can be the artist I always wanted to be. Toying with buying the farm and packing it all up in SJ was an excercise in my upcoming reality.

Meantime, there are lots of themes running around my head, and a great deal of appreciation for my sister and brother-in-law’s hospitality. And a laziness that I need to cultivate a few more days. Sleeping late and only doing what I please (bad, bad to not have the routine and writer’s determination to get to the desk!) and starting the next book seem to be limiting my interest in wrestling with getting writing done.

Appalling this blog habit of posting first drafts. With crumbs of insight sometimes, but really skinny on overall craft and meaning.