I started a blog in 2009, nine years and a few centuries from where I am today, in every sense of "where". I put it on hold a year later.
In 2014 I returned to blogging, creating a new site, which I named, "Chan's Plots - The Plot Thickens." Here is a link to it:
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6635200085280914860#allposts.
Here is what I wrote then:
As the blog’s name suggests, the action of the story is intensifying, becoming more complicated, leading to the final denouement. In this case it is also a metaphor for my life. I am working on the plot of my current chapter, both literally and figuratively. In a figurative sense, at seventy-five, I am creating this late-in-life chapter that combines retirement, contemplation, contentment, and a keen desire for adventure and learning. There is no manual for it, and it takes courage, patience, and chutzpah to pull it off while negotiating with time and nature.
In the literal sense, I am putting in place a mechanism to create a daily writing practice. I have an on-line Dutch language app that tracks the number of consecutive days I take a lesson. I get an e-mail every morning that tells me “You’re on fire! Continue your xxx-day stretch!” I am now at 227 days. This is my first day on The Plot Thickens.
To get me started, I am going to write about a trip my husband and I are taking to the Netherlands in May. I used to write travel logs as a way of staying in touch with the family while on business trips. There was always so much to report, taking a few minutes to write about the day was enjoyable. That should be the same way with the upcoming trip, easing me into a routine that I can transition to the REAL next chapter, the one in the fiction piece I have been researching and ruminating on for way too long. Time to get it out!
So, here goes. The first real post will follow, and thereafter I may automate a daily email to myself, saying that I am on fire and reminding me to continue my x-day streak!
Then life intervened. Cue 2017 and still no daily writing practice. In October of that year I decided it was time to "put up or shut up", as my mom always said; so, with trepidation, I hit the key that signed me up for NaNoWriMo. By the end of the month I had 59,600 words and the draft of a historical fiction novel I can work with.
Since then I have been honing my research. I took another course on Memoir Writing, and have completed a few small creative non-fiction pieces. I even had the temerity to submit two of them to contests. You can see that I am not a toe-in-the-water-first kind of woman.
While reviewing some work I had done in the nineties, when I first started upon this fitful writing journey of mine, I came across the following journal entry:
May 28, 1991
I am hereby embarking on my adventure as a writer. I bought a book today at the Yale Co-op on the craft of writing. One of the points it makes is to review/read current examples of fiction constantly. Sometimes the object will be to look for techniques of introducing characters, other times it will be to study how feelings are explored. The important thing is just to keep reading and to keep the mind open for suggestions and methods.
So, this year is 2018, and now that it is moving again, I really do have to keep this train on the track. The end of the line may not be far away!
