Dear readers,
I
have taken a long break from writing this newsletter, and I don't quite know why. Being busy is not a sufficient reason; I'm always busy, and life is always full. Instead, I simply didn't get my head around putting together a newsletter that might be useful to you all. So here we are, and it's December.
As this year draws to a close, I have been
in a reflective mood, or rather, I have finally had the time to reflect after having had houseguests for pretty much the entire fall. Just yesterday I completed an essay about my experience as writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home; the Washington Independent Review of Books had been waiting for that essay for months. As I reviewed it, I realized that it was a good thing that I got to it so late in the year: Writing this essay was a great way to pay
tribute to the experience. My residency had wrapped up in July, and I had already mentally shelved somewhere in the recesses of my brain. That residency was one of the highlights of 2015 for me, and it deserved to be marveled at again. So, waiting to do something might prove to be a good thing.
That's me in Abba's (Grandfather Ernest Hall's) room at the
Hemingway Birthplace Home, doing what I loved to do there, i.e. poke about and try to capture the atmosphere of the house
with my camera. To take a step inside, see my post So what have I been so busy with after poking around in the Hemingway House? First, and this is probably my biggest achievement of the year, I accepted the failure of
trying to find an agent/publisher for my memoir manuscript and embarked on a massive rewrite. (See my popular post Rejection vs. Failure) I dedicated six weeks to
this effort, and in the process I discovered my ideal writing life - half a day of dedicated writing time (in this case at the Writers Workspace on the north side of Chicago), with the rest of the day available to "real life," such as driving my son around, running errands, going to the beach, etc.
Perhaps my creative juices were thoroughly used up by that effort. Then came traveling to Israel and to Scotland in the summer...
...wandering the narrow lanes of the Old City of Jerusalem in 41C (105F) degree heat
and promptly suffering heat exhaustion...
...making a serious effort to progress in my learning of Hebrew and
thoroughly scrambling my brain in the process (the heat exhaustion,
including a massive headache, didn't help)...
...welcoming clouds and rain and the green, green highlands of Scotland...
...hosting houseguests (here a massive postcard writing session
at my favorite Chicago café with my niece and sister)...
...embarking on the building of our barn
with living quarters
on our property in Indiana (certainly the costliest creative
project we've undertaken so far)...
This is my gift to you, a chance to reflect on where this year has taken you in terms of your creative pursuits and where you might want to go in 2016. This is a process I do for myself at the end of every year, and this is the third time I am sharing the tool. I have already filled out mine and realized that while I was nursing my creative funk this fall, I had actually already accomplished quite a bit this year.
Wishing you a Happy Holiday season, an enjoyable time between the years, and all the best for a
creative year 2016!
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