Tonight I am on my way back to Toronto. I am so excited and already really feeling a little bit overwhelmed but I am mostly very excited. I haven't seen my mother in almost eight months, which is the longest we've ever gone without seeing each other and has only happened one other time (when I was going to school in Vancouver).
I do not like being away from my family and though the extra time to myself I have in LA may be helping me to get writing done, in a perfect world I would be living in Toronto, getting paid to write what I love, and enough so that I could live comfortably with Tom, and whoever else should come along. That could still happen. But for now, it's still a dream.
Neil Gaiman had something fabulous to say about dreams recently, when he addressed the University of the Arts in Philidelphia. I suggest that you watch this video of his speech. If you're an artist of any kind, perhaps not even producing but with art in your spirit, then this is for you. It's nineteen minutes of your life, but well spent when you consider some of the other, more wasteful things you've done with nineteen minutes of your time. When I'm sad and wish my family were nearer, when I have my "I'm not going fast enough" moments about my novel writing, Gaiman reminds me to use it. It's something I prescribed to long ago. For this is how we, as Gaiman puts it, "make good art."
As a side note, I love the bit in here about how he lied about his writing credentials to get his first job in journalism. I wish I would have had the balls to do something like that when I was starting out!
And speaking about "not going fast enough" with my novel. I'm eight chapters away from finishing the rewrites of Book One. When I get back from Toronto I plan to be done them in no more than two weeks. Then it's off to be read, by people, for the first time all the way through. I'm both excited an terrified. For now though, I love this book I'm writing and I just hope I can do right by it. Maybe one day you'll get to read it and hopefully you'll think I have done.
I do not like being away from my family and though the extra time to myself I have in LA may be helping me to get writing done, in a perfect world I would be living in Toronto, getting paid to write what I love, and enough so that I could live comfortably with Tom, and whoever else should come along. That could still happen. But for now, it's still a dream.
Neil Gaiman had something fabulous to say about dreams recently, when he addressed the University of the Arts in Philidelphia. I suggest that you watch this video of his speech. If you're an artist of any kind, perhaps not even producing but with art in your spirit, then this is for you. It's nineteen minutes of your life, but well spent when you consider some of the other, more wasteful things you've done with nineteen minutes of your time. When I'm sad and wish my family were nearer, when I have my "I'm not going fast enough" moments about my novel writing, Gaiman reminds me to use it. It's something I prescribed to long ago. For this is how we, as Gaiman puts it, "make good art."
As a side note, I love the bit in here about how he lied about his writing credentials to get his first job in journalism. I wish I would have had the balls to do something like that when I was starting out!
And speaking about "not going fast enough" with my novel. I'm eight chapters away from finishing the rewrites of Book One. When I get back from Toronto I plan to be done them in no more than two weeks. Then it's off to be read, by people, for the first time all the way through. I'm both excited an terrified. For now though, I love this book I'm writing and I just hope I can do right by it. Maybe one day you'll get to read it and hopefully you'll think I have done.
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