Writing prompt:
What is your dream for your writing life? What are you going to commit to in the next 6-12 months to help bring that dream to life?
Ooh, that should have been prompt for Day 13. It does not bode well to publicly declare one’s dreams.
Yeah, I get it. You think I say that because I fear falling far short of the mark. Even if I plan something, and commit to it, I still do not know how long it will take.
I will keep it simple. Aside from my day job, I commit to:
Writing at least once a week and working at that novel stashed in the back of my mind, in the bottom drawer, scattered in fits and starts in documents on my hard drive, in dog-eared notebooks and loose leaves of paper. That thing. Ze boook. Even if one energetically jumped over the hurdle of one’s sixtieth birthday and started life anew, one still has to acknowledge that time is short and stamina becomes relative. Approximate progress in the last six months: erm about 8% of total.
In the process of attending diligently to 1. above, I shall keep only what is essential in my 24-inch high stack of notebooks and “papers”. I will type up what is worth typing up from handwritten drafts. I will file whatever should have been filed to begin with. I will throw away the rest. I will eat a large bar of chocolate every time the pile shrinks by six inches. You see? A built-in incentive plan.
As an offshoot of 1. and 2. above, I will publish on Substack any short stories that I might rework because 1. and 2. are a potential source of inspiration. Then there will be evidence that at least something is going on.
I will carry on posting as close to daily as I can get in this space. I will try to make it interesting, or at least well written.
That is all. My “day job” is calling me.