This is such a busy time for folks with kids. We are living the last month or so of school and for whatever reason my kids seem to teeter on the brink of things this year academically, spiritually, emotionally — this has been a challenging and demanding year. With summer looming, there will be any opportunities to stick our feet in the river and less time to write.
I am thinking about that tension.
I’m starting to work more seriously on writing projects. As I listened hard at the Festival of Faith & Writing and looked at my writing life and habits, I realize that I need to cut back on some things before I can ever dream of space to write every day. (I know I have a lot to tell you about that experience, the festival. We’ve been back a week and there’s been no time!)
Projects that I’m working on:
I am working on a book review of the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer for The Englewood Review of Books and hope to do more of those, both for Englewood and other publications.
I continue to write for Provoketive magazine: This included a review of the book Resignation of Eve by Jim Henderson, a piece titled The Accidental Stay-At-Home Mom and others, but by far the most popular essay was The Voice of the Feminine. That content is not repeated here on my blog so you will have to pop over to there to read it. I hope you will.
I am working on a short series of articles on “The F word and the Church.” (Yeah, that F word: feminist.)
I am really excited to hear that I will have some poem in a book about fear titled Not Afraid to be published around August, 2012 by Civitas Press. (This is the same press that published my essay on Depression in their book Not Alone which is available now. If you know someone who suffers from depression this book may help. I have been told by many people that it has been a good, honest resource. I also have many pieces on my blog about my personal trials with the black dog of depression. They are collected here. )
What I want to change:
One thing that I find to be soul crushing and destructive for me is Facebook. Being at-home with such great flexibility to my schedule I see that I allow many things to interfere with the “work” of writing and with spiritual growth. Facebook is such a time waster for me. I’m inherently curious, nosy kind of person and the fact that I can vicariously follow along other’s lives is bad for me. That’s where the soul crushing part comes in. It’s like high school insecurity all over again. So I’ve been tempted to quit completely.
But at the Festival of Faith & Writing I heard over and over that writers must have online presence and following. We have to nurture that and be able to “prove” our popularity to a publisher. But the flip side of that is that it is just not good for me!
If I don’t have time
to think,
to be,
to write and
to allow the Holy One to mold and move me (not really in that order.)
So I’m backing off of social media for a season — except here. I’m really going to try to do this moderately. When I got hooked on Farmville (of all things — proves I can get addicted to anything!) I had to quit cold turkey and I did. I don’t want to do that with Facebook because I don’t like being an all or nothing person. But I’m going to try to limit my time there. And set some writing goals for the next few months. I look forward to sharing those with you.
Another thing that I learned at the festival was that I need to hone the purpose of my blog. Mine has multiple messages and intents. I have been known to write about:
- family (dysfunctional and otherwise.)
- God and devotion, faith and (dis)belief
- women in the church, feminism as a Christian’s option
- various justice issues
- my alcoholism and addictions
- my church – Blackhawk Evangelical Church
- poetry on all these topics
- prose on all these topics
Is there anything in particular that you come here to read? Where do you see my passions and strengths converging in helpful ways? Would you add more of anything?
Grace & Peace. Melody
Logic & Imagination 