I had every intention of writing about priorities, but I’m having issues. Priority issues. Writer, teacher, feminist and activist Grace Paley noted, “Writers write about what we don’t know about what we know.” In which case I should be able to write volumes.
My experience in graduate school was much the same. The weekly requirement to read a book and write an annotation on it trumped moving my thesis along. Now I need to see that blogging doesn’t encroach on editing and publishing that manuscript, a novel. Or the gardening memoir that has been marinating far too long.
Things are piling up around here.
But it’s all good. All writing is rewriting, and that’s what I am doing.
Quit blogging, you say? Not a chance. The first step in writing is observation. Writers walk into the world with antennae, and prompts pop up as sure as spring. Themes seem to find us. The rest is practice.
“If you write for yourself,” writes William Zinsser, “you’ll reach all the people you want in your writing.” This line could be a blogger’s maxim.
Today one of the first questions that an agent or publisher asks a writer is whether she has an audience. Well, that would be you.
We can make this happen.
The gardening memoir should be published first. I have already purchased the stationery with which I intend to reply to readers’ letters. Stored in safekeeping: dozens of orange boxes of notecards of ladies gardening, as well as designs for gentlemen, illustrated by Laura Stoddart (pictured). Hopefully one day you’ll receive one.
And so it goes, carts before horses in everything. Priorities.
a little elbow room
a little elbow room 