Don’t
worry, I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, just off of the blogging wagon.
Christmas Eve (the last time I blogged) seems so far away. Almost as if it happened
last year…
The
holiday season was pretty magical. Christmas was a lot of fun and my boyfriend
and I got engaged on New Year’s Day! This is actually the main reason why I
haven’t been blogging. I’ve been wedding planning instead. Wedding planning
actually involves a lot of writing, it’s just not the type of writing that I’d
like to be doing. It’s all making lists and writing emails. But I’m determined
to be more disciplined with my writing now that I’ve got a venue and catering
nailed down.
What
you can’t see is that after writing that last sentence, I just zoned out on the
couch for several minutes staring at smoke. My fiancé just bought a meat smoker
and it’s sitting on the balcony in a direct line of sight from the couch where
I’m writing. Smoke is so pretty! And so distracting.
While
I haven’t been writing lately, I have not been completely uninvolved in the
writing process and the furthering of my writing career. My primary critique
group met this week and we had a really great session. We have a new home at a
meeting room in the Lafayette library and we also have a new member. Our
critique session was so rousing that at one point a librarian came to shush us.
We were brainstorming ideas for someone’s story and I came up with a good one
and everyone was practically cheering. It’s so much fun working with people who
get excited about writing and about helping each other. The story I brought
this week has a lot of flaws and I was eager to get some insight about fixing
them. My partners came up with some really good ideas, so now I just need to
buckle down and try some of them out.
For
my birthday last year, my fiancé gave me the gift of going to the SCBWI winter
conference in New York. After some thought, I decided that instead of this
conference I wanted to go to a writing workshop. The workshop is held at the
Big Sur Lodge and it’s organized by the Andrea Brown Literary Agency and the
Henry Miller Library. Over the course of a three-day weekend, you have your
story read and critiqued by agents, writing coaches, and peers. I’m super-duper
excited and can’t wait for March.
Climbing
has been going really well and I’ve actually had luck climbing with some nice
girls. Because it’s been so long since I bouldered outdoors, I’m having trouble
deciding how hard the gym grades really are (they’re usually a grade or two
below what outdoor grades are, so a gym V5 might only be like a V3 outdoors). I’m
now climbing V4s and V5s in the gym so I’m pretty excited and I can’t wait to
climb outdoors again.
