Morning News in the Evening. July 19, 2024: After an Absence
It has been ten days since I posted last. The absence has been due to three reasons, in ascending order.
1. A friend and I took a trip to Clintwood, VA. This is not an auspicious place, but a good one. It is the county seat of Virginia's "baby" county, which means it was the last one to be created in the late 1800s by take parts of two adjacent counties in Southwestern Virginia on the Kentucky border. We took the trip because it is the setting of my latest novel and I wanted to visit it. The Director of Jonnie B. Deel Librarian, Kim Rose, probably wondered why this random woman from Georgia was calling her abut having a book event in July, but she set up a wonderful time. I met the ladies who run the Dickenson County Historical Society and they gave us a tour of their archives, and it is a labor of love. We also stopped at my grandmother's home place and the "Natural Tunnel State Park," and I got to see how much the little town I visited as a child in the 1960s has grown.
2. Second, I felt that I needed to just plain keep my mouth shut in light of the political situation; not that I write about politics very much, but it does come up, and there is such seeming chaos in the news right now. I did not want to write some opinion about the national situation as if I know something. President Trump was shot, and we don't know why or how (I mean, seriously, the shooter carried a range finder into the rally?), President Biden seems ill, J.D. Vance was chosen as Trump's Vice President, the media reports every hour that someone in the Democratic Party is trying to get Biden to drop out, who will take his place, the convention as a whole--was it idolatry or unity, a crowd of deluded people or a conference of citizens? I will withhold my opinion.
3. Finally, I have recently finished reading a provocative book,
E. Lily Yu has convinced me not to write unthoughtfully. She writes about the seriousness of producing writing and putting it out in public, and doing it with quality and honor and for God's glory. I have taken her ideas seriously, perhaps too much so, and it has formed a sort of writer's block. In response, I am also reading Writing the Mind Alive, an interesting book about proprioceptive writing, and I decided to perform its rituals (which aren't that much), and it has helped me clear my mind about some issues. The ritual is lighting a candle, (which means getting the room dark), playing Baroque music, and writing whatever comes out for 30 minutes with the prompt, "What do I mean by..." It has some therapeutic properties, and I am not one drawn to therapeutic "stuff" out of the realm of Christian spirituality.
I'm struggling with writing in general, and I hope that leads to more quality.
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