Where’d You Go, Anita? #writing

Hi there!

Wowzers, this is embarrassing…

So, I took a blog hiatus that was suppose to last for the summer. I was crown-deep in revisions and far down the creative well and just plain busy. (Who isn’t? I know.) Well, summer very quickly slipped into fall and fall into winter and now it’s 2017?!!!

It isn’t that I haven’t thought of you, I have. I’ve read lots of books that I thought you would like. And I’ve baked things I thought you might want to try. I’ve even snapped photos of said baking and dog-eared pages of great quotes from said books.

But I haven’t written and it was crappy of me but I’m high on New Year’s spirit and hoping to turn over a new electronic leaf. I hope you’re still there. :-)

So what’s new? I see you’re growing out that beard, nice. That new shade of lipstick suits you. I really like the last poem you posted. Oh, how I’ve missed drooling over your vegetarian creations. Not to mention those cakes!

Me?

Nothing much, really. I started a part-time gig to give me a little space from my writing desk. Yes, it was the creative fatigue, but that’s better now. I actually got back to writing this week and it’s been scary and obsessive and overwhelming. In other words, it’s been great and I’m happy to be back at it. The break was necessary, though, and came with many perks in the form of new lovely people in my life and new experiences. I think the kids call that a win-win.

As I mentioned, I finished an exhausting round of revisions by early fall on a manuscript that I’ve been working on for the last six years. The good news is that just before the holidays my book baby found a good home. My book baby has a future! Ha ha. Sometimes you just don’t know…You have a book baby and send it out into the world and you don’t know how it will fare. I imagine parents of human children experience this too. ;-) More news about this later.

On the baking side of life, I got into watching The Great British Bake-Off thanks to some British expat friends and fell under the blue-eyed spell of Mary Berry. I can’t believe there was ever a time when I didn’t know MB existed or what a technical challenge was! It’s shameful. I baked Mary’s Yule Log for Christmas this year and it was a crowd-pleaser, but then, how could it be anything less?

Book recs?

“All the Light We Cannot See” – pure magic.

“The Best Kind of People” – unsettling but important.

“Bossypants” – funny, surprising and insightful.

Any resolutions?

Come on, we all make them.

Mine? Ha ha, well, I’m going to work at being a more consistent and effective communicator. Seriously, it’s #1 on the list. I’m going to work at being politely assertive and more honest with people about how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. (Introverts aren’t natural whiz kids at this, big surprise.) I’m going to see new places within my beautiful homeland and beyond it. I’m going to eat more cake and take more naps, more often than not, in that order.

That’s about it.

Oh, and no more a-holes. I think that’s a resolution we can all embrace. :-)

I don’t know about you but 2016 kicked my ass. Typical Year of the Monkey shenanigans. Maybe that’s the reason my hiatus lasted so long. ??? A woman I was speaking to last week at my day job summed it up perfectly. She said that 2016 was a year of loss and assault. Just when you’d caught your breath, something else would happen, someone else would pass away, something else would happen in the world that made you question humanity and its path. I know good and great and spectacular things happened too but somehow it’s the loss and assault feeling that’s stuck with me. And I’ve been happily letting it go. I’m looking forward to this snowy fresh start of sorts and moving forward toward the good things that I know are ahead.  I can’t quite see them, they’re a little too far-off and blurry, but I know they’re there.

If you’ve made to this point in my ramble, wow, thanks, I would have given up three paragraphs ago. ;-)

Looking forward to connecting soon.

Thanks as always for dropping in.

Happy New Year to you!

A :-) xo

PS. Get anything good for Christmas?

PPS. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you that I got to see Margaret Atwood at our local writers’ festival in October! She wore skeleton gloves (pre-Halloween) and rapped from her new book “Hag-Seed.” Pure awesome.

PPPS. Also awesome: I started formal piano lessons. And I’m awful! Who knew that a writer who spends all day typing would have such weak fingers? I’m still shocked. ;-)