Thursday, June 30, 2011

novel not quite in progress

I'm sitting in the Garden Room at Aldermarsh on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. This is one of my favorite writing spots. A desk built in to the wall. Straight ahead is the lush green half-acre of garden, to my right the alder marsh and the hammock and more lilies than I can count.

I'm here for a luxurious 8 days of writing and this is Day 2. I like it best when I come up here with a project in full steam. Then my tasks are really clear. This time I am both between projects and sitting in indecision about whether to rework novel #2 from a whodunit into a piece of literary fiction or move on to novel #3. I also have poems I want to work with, my 100-prompt project to work on, books on writing to read, books of fiction to read, lots of choices. Probably too many.

So I made a list of possibilities, including some do-very-little items. And I decided to take on writing 3-4 chapters of a new book. It might not turn into anything, and it might. I might decide to stay with it all of the retreat or consider that enough for now.

I took a prompt that I wrote on May 6 (it's actually #1 of the 100 I'm currently writing) called "Road Trip," and I started writing. I like some of what's happening a lot. At the same time, I'm not so sure. So my indecision continues to be at play and I can sit with that.

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