Ack.
Is that the right onomatopoeia for disgust?
I'm terrible at blogging. I've been thinking of lots of excuses, like ... who cares? Which led me to my next thought: Who cares? I mean really - do I have enough important things to say about anything that would lead people back here every day? Or week? Or month? I hardly think the evening news has enough relevant information, let alone me.
I started this one, today's blog, out of competitive spite. My wife has a blog (lukeandsarahhawley.blogger.com) and she's stinkin' funny. I asked her how her blog was going and she said she hadn't written in a while and then asked me how mine was going and so here I am, trying to explain away my absence. I'm sure I've missed the point. Or I can't remember it. I suppose I started to keep my writing sharp but I've been doing too much of it on my own time to remember to do it here.
I'm almost done with my first draft of my first novel. I would say I'm within 10,000 words, which, now that I'm looking at it, looks like a lot. But I write somewhere around 1,500 words a day, with none on my worst days and near 5,000 when I'm really cranking. Of course, a good portion of it gets scrapped, but it makes me feel human just to it. Advocation. Jay Garrison, who was my supervisory teacher during my student teaching, used to tell his classes, "Everyone needs an advocation to go with their vocation." I have a great vocation, working in a resource room with middle school kids that need extra help and make me laugh all day long. And I'm blessed with an advocation I love. Where was I? 10,000 words. So probably by the end of the week. And that will be crazy. To be done with something! Even if it's just the first draft ...
So, that's where I've been. Writing. Just not here. Also, you may never read my novel, because the first novel is something that never gets out really, unless you're one lucky son of gun, and if you did read it you might hate it, for all I know, you might not even make it through the first section (it's in three sections). But somewhere in the last four months I've realized that it doesn't matter. I write because I love to write. And, oh faithful followers, whoever you are, I wish the same for you: An advocation. And if it lines up with your vocation and you're one of the lucky few that do what you love and love what you do, then ... I'm not sure but there's probably some fancy French phrase that you can translate to say, Here, Here. Is it salut? Probably. All I know is that ete is summer and I only know that from crossword puzzles.
