New: Novel-in-progress. I smile as I write this because there isn’t a word of it written down. It’s all in the head at the moment. I’m taking a breezier approach with this one, not planning the chapters in advance, letting characters take shape and decide the course of things. I know their faces, their jobs. I feel their emptiness, know how to break their hearts. Someday I’ll give them life in pages.
Old: Short story about a boy with a questionable gift. A beast, this one. It’s a story I truly want to tell, but why, oh why, is it so hard to polish? Must be the element in it that is so familiar to me but very strange to most.
New: Adventures, not the globetrotting sort. Beloved sister due to give birth late fall– I’m an eager Auntie. My sweetheart embarking on the biggest move of his career. Possible change of address this summer. Life will be so much different by the end of the year.
Old: Resurrected the habit of journaling. Not the dear-diary-detailing-my-day kind, more like a way to untangle thoughts. Centre myself. My memory is too good, my imagination too wild at times. Pen and notebook force me to focus, puzzle out a deep question. Or write a grocery list. Sometimes that’s all it takes to calm me down.
Leah Ranada 