Thinking more about writing, post-move wrap

Well it’s done. We’re in the new house, unpacked, things set up and mostly put away, and on Saturday we even started in the garden. How’s that for a week after move day? Seriously impressive according to most of those who have come for a visit in the last week. Lucky us, we could afford to take a week off to get organized (and take lots of baths in our new fabulous bathtub from which you can see the mountains).

That really has been my whole last week though, working nonstop on the house, running errands to pick things up, drop things off, clean up the old apartment, put groceries in the empty fridge. It’s a hellofa job to move, but moving two houses simultaneously is exponentially more work. Not to mention the part where we had tradespeople in to do painting, build shelving and walk through our basement finishing project over the last few days as well. A lot to contend with, but once the art is on the walls you know you can relax and curl up with a book from time to time, the work isn’t everpresent when its visual cues are gone.

I started back on my writing schedule today, delving into a poem I wrote before moving which was critiqued at my writer’s group yesterday afternoon. (A very hungover group I might add, as we had thrown ourselves a little spring cocktail party just the night before). Our assignment before next group is to submit some piece of work somewhere, and I’m thinking the poem I am working on just might be it. If only I can finish the last three lines which I started rearranging this morning. Oh, and the title…. it still needs one that isn’t simply a “working” one. Though I now believe this body of work produced in the last several months is becoming an interlocked collection, it’s more difficult to separate out one or two pieces to go into the world alone. How much they lose when not alongside the others! Still, I want them to stand on their own, and so they must go out in the world soon. I have three poems perhaps ready, a short piece of flash fiction already submitted somewhere, and another four pieces partially worked.

I really feel the need to start turning out more than one piece per month, I’m hoping now with the move done I can focus more keenly on writing, but then I always hope that and it seems the only way is just to keep doing it. Fortunately I am very compelled by the world my characters are drawn in, so it makes it easy to enter and enter again to the same places. Daunted though, I think, and lazy too. Sometimes it just seems *too hard* to start a new piece, and I have to block my computer from accessing the internet so I don’t waste my time in the morning.

There is a part of me still secretly plotting to do a Creative Writing MFA one day. Perhaps if I ever give up the union gig, or lose an election and have no choice but to give it up – then I could justify the indulgence. For now I’ll just stick with trying to get something published…….

I’m faltering here because I just had a fairly extraordinary phone call that I can’t quite talk about just yet. A union matter, and certainly an interesting situation – so I will sign off and write more on that later.