Today is my spiritual birthday! Nineteen years ago, I made the best decision of my life and signed everything over to Jesus. It’s been a wild journey with him ever since!
This month has been packed to the gills. I celebrated the new year with my best friend Eir, I watched Truest start cropping up for pre-order on online bookstores all over, I turned 33 and didn’t have a third-of-a-century crisis in any way.
I spent close to a week up in Duluth on a writing retreat, where I hammered out 10k words in three days. I’m absolutely thrilled about my work in progress! The characters are gripping my heart, making me laugh, making me cry. And the best thing is that I’ve been absolutely LOVING the writing process lately. 2014 was a bit harrowing, and– truth be told– there were many stretches where I didn’t feel like I was enjoying writing anymore. Over and over, I’d ask myself, “Is this still what you want?” Sometimes I’d have to really think about it, but my answer always was yes. And now: to enjoy it again? Delicious. Hard, hard work. But good work.
Some exciting things are coming up for me! I’ll be reviewing my galleys soon, making last-minute changes and corrections to the manuscript, and the cover will be revealed next month! I’ve been so eager to show the world– I hope you’ll all love it as much as I do!
I absolutely adore Billy Collins, and I really like Annie Dillard. Polar definitely had its moments—there were lines and images that were so visceral, I had to take them down in my notebook. And I *really* liked one of the poems. Clearly he has talent. But I just didn’t connect with most of the body of poems, and I wasn’t blown away by diction or rhythm (e.g. “beautiful woman” was repeated several times…yawn). Taste is so very subjective. I’m looking forward to connecting with and resisting more poetry in the upcoming months 🙂