I couldn't decide today between earth and sky, so you get both. Shades of blue.


If I haven't mentioned, writing fiction is really fun.

(Well, except when it's miserable, but that's a whole other set of issues.)

Really I mean that writing fiction is fun compared to nonfiction. I started out as an essayist because that kind of voice came naturally to me. And there's satisfaction in telling those kinds of stories. True stories about life and people, the things we experience. Once this new novel is complete, I might spend a little time writing or revising some essays, just to get my hand in again.

Then again, I might not. Because writing fiction is really run.

It's fun like reading is fun. You know that feeling you get, when you're reading a book you love, and your mind is sunk in that story, that world, that voice? I get that writing fiction. When its going right, my mind returns to the story and the characters over and over through the day and I would absolutely stay up all night to finish reading it.

If only I'd finished writing it, that is.

It's an odd sensation, because that aspect of writing feels more like self-love, like navel-gazing, than any other. Like I'm so in love with the sound of my own voice that I want to listen to it all the time. Perhaps this is why so many writers like to ascribe their inspiration to muses or other outside storytellers.

"It's not me, I just write down the story as it comes to me."

Loving Calliope or Erato feels more wholesome than loving the sound of one's own voice. Besides, as we all know, that way leads to insanity for writers. Ego is the eternal danger.

Amusingly, the last time I used the "insanity" label on this blog, I accidentally typed my heroine's name when I logged in that morning, instead of my password. Which is exactly what I did today.

At least I'm consistent in the way my thoughts run?

Just so long as it's not a foolish consistency, which leads to hobgoblins and all manner of obnoxious creatures. I'm pretty sure hobgoblins are not the new zombies, which were the new angels, which were the new vampires.

I know, it's hard to keep up.

In the beginning...

Once upon a time, when my essay collection first came out – so this is back in the days of 2004 – I found myself trying to explain to people what the book was about. “Creative nonfiction,” I would say. Or “personal essays.” Or “musings about life and what the things that happen to us mean.” A couple of times I went so far as to say “they’re stories about collisions with the world. In the silence of our skulls, we can't really understand how someone else experiences the world. But we can send out messages. These are mine.” That last was directly from my publicity packet, and no more enlightening than the rest.

I was out in California – Fresno, I’m thinking – for my day job, having this conversation with a young woman (read: far more technically savvy and hip than I) who, upon hearing my convoluted description of my shiny, new, published-by-a-prestigious-university-press book exclaimed: “Oh! It’s like a blog!”

Okay, yes, I was insulted. I knew what a blog was (hey, I’m not THAT unhip), but I thought they were, well, less than literary. A passing fad. Nothing compared to the vast realm of real published work.

When my friend, a former Little, Brown assistant editor, said I should blog with my stories about promoting my book, I said no, I didn’t have time for that. When my mother, who has a jobette with Linkshare and sees every blog in the known universe, said I should blog, I patiently explained that blogging was a waste of energy for serious writers.

Five years later: here I am.

I concede. I capitulate. I jump on the proverbial band wagon (onto which, I’m reliably informed, 10,000 other people A DAY are also jumping – egad). Daily musings about collisions with the world. About love and power, and all that goes with them.

Hopefully there will be a happy ending.