It is no Desert

I’m considering abandoning most of the networking sites I frequent.  This will stay up because it’s my author website, but other than that, no more tweets, no more facebooking.  Probably limit the blogs I read to the literary ones.  It’s not you, it’s me.  Well, it’s you a little.  I’m putting myself through hell by being up on every little thing and seeing your lives and hers and being out here doing very, very little that nourishes me.  I am phenomenally affected by what I see these days and I don’t like giving myself the opportunity to drop those little pains into the well that is the internet.  I don’t like my instinct being to run to you to say how I feel.  You’re a crutch, and not one I need–rather one that’s letting me atrophy.  Whatever metaphorical legs I have, they’re getting weaker.

It’s a long road to the summer.  It’s a long way back to Ohio and what joys I might find there.  The writing is easier than ever but I’m afraid I don’t have enough words to fill the distance.  I don’t, in fact.  This book will be done in a few months–two is the projection– and then editing, and it will all be faster than anything I’ve done before, and better, but it’s the Word of God alone and I need the bread, too.

This is all rather melodramatic, and I’ll be back inevitably, if I do leave.  But I am bothered by these things, and not just emotionally, but by what they mean, what they’re doing to me and taking away from me as a writer.  I’d miss the updates about Iran and Morocco more than anything.  The rest is just egotism.  So I’m going to try this, for a while.  Be an internet ascetic.  I’ll have email, of course, and I still love you all and want to know how you are.  So if you don’t have my email, drop me a line here and I’ll get to you.  You know what would be even better?  Real mail.  Let’s do that.

Janet Fitch was on campus yesterday as the keynote speaker for Writers Week.  I’m not big on her writing, but from what she said I know she’s got it  together and I have a lot of respect for her.  She said she doesn’t know how she feels about something until she writes about it.  And I figure that’s true for me, too.  My books thus far are mostly a 800+ page wrestle with what it means to be a moral being in an immoral world.  We’ll see what comes out of me next.  Probably more of the same.  I haven’t found an answer, yet.

From the Land of the Lotus Eaters, take care.  I’ll be emblazoning the Crane on my eyelids, and thinking of you.