Erin Lodes

In my last post — which was a month ago — sorry — I talked about my goals for 2018. One of those was to post on this blog regularly so you can see how well that’s doing. Other ones aren’t doing so bad. I’ve made progress on my book and I’ve been doing some yoga.

I really kind of forgot what I intended this blog post to be about. I could rant about any number of things but today I am tired.

There’s a quote by a writer named Kate Braverman, something I stole from a YouTube clip of a writing workshop she gave. By the way you should check them out because all of the writing advice she gives is incredible.

“You’ve got to be willing to open up on the page and bleed on the page. You must amputate parts of your body. You must put your organs there and smash them. That is what the page demands.”

I am trying to follow this advice. The book I’m working on is very close to my soul. I’ve been working on it for over six years now. Wow. I just did that math and am I really that old? I thought I’d have finished it by now, or at least have finished something else. And I have finished short stories and started other books but nothing substantial. And nothing like this.

This book involves bleeding. This book involves taking a scalpel to my flesh and peeling back the layers. And this is how I know it’s worth writing. But it is also why I am tired.

Because for every plot problem I solve, another rears its ugly head. For every breakthrough it seems ten more walls rise up. And I am tired.

I am not finished. I am not giving up.

I am just tired.

And I wanted to say it.

I guess that’s what this blog post was about. So I’d best go change the title.

Sometimes you have to write it to figure it out. Which is why we keep writing.

Anyway. That just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?