02 January 2013

Check in for the new year

I have been silent for a while, living in family out there and living in poems in here, mostly posting them at Susan's Poetry and on Facebook.  I answer letters, respond to comments, and sit down for way too many hours in the day.

I have made two decisions based in the past year's experience which some may call New Year's Resolutions:  (1) boldly write about what I have been silent about, and (2) make sure to have an "artist's date" at least once a week.  The latter is from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I worked with almost 20 years ago. I plan to combine walking with seeing places in Philadelphia that I haven't seen: museums, parks, stores, riverside sites and more.  I started with a Pendle Hill retreat over New Year's eve and day.

One writing word-shop ended in December and another begins next week. There, my mentor Alison Hicks encourages the growth of my novel The Storyteller and I plan to bring in pages for the other writers in the workshop to read.  No longer shy about writing, liking my chapters, seeing the conflicts and plots grow--I am amazed to be insider to what is for me an extremely slow process.  V e r y  slow.

That's all for now, folks.  


 

2 comments:

Audrey Howitt aka Divalounger said...

Liked to see this side of your writing Susan!

Susan said...

Hi Audrey!

I am so glad you stopped by! I try to write once a week, but--as you can see--I have already failed that this year. I like to think here. At Real Toads, though, we are writing collaborative poems and much of my thinking has gone into a pen-pal connection Hannah and I are trying just to get to know each other. It's hard to collaborate without that or at least sharing an issue. Maybe I'll write about that next.