After spending every day of 2016 writing a novel -- and writing a book about writing that novel ... that is not yet written -- I spent the first half of 2017 basically ignoring the manuscript, though I'd occasionally think about it.
I did know that I needed to clear space to devote to editing/re-writing the first draft--it's a massive undertaking. For such to happen, I'd have to finish one last poetry manuscript to get it out of my In-Box. Well, I finished this last week!
And still I hemmed and hawed about returning to the novel until yesterday when I finished Clare Messud's brilliant novel, THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS -- a novel synchronistically about an artist who was fearful *going for it*, the same impetus I require for completing the long-form novel.
Sometimes, one needs to be tipped into writing by the reading of another's brilliant book. So it was with Clare Messud--here's an excerpt:
I chose the above excerpt, btw, because that moment Messud describes is, for me, not something from "school or college" but something that arises when I'm writing/making a poem. Perhaps that's why I'm prolific -- I revel in the poem's extraordinary experience. Anyway, ...
... my gratitude to Clare Messud. This is the novel that's reinvigorated me into the next stage of the novel-writing:
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