Coming Along

I spent most of last weekend in Boston, at a conference with 10,999 other writers. It was, by turns, inspiring and disillusioning. The most inspiring part was at the end of Jeanette Winterson's hour-long talk/reading when she said, "Andrea, go home and quit your job." Okay, what she actually said was, "Don't live a half-life." But I think that's the literal translation. Of course, easy for her to say, being British and having universal health care. At any rate, I will read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal as soon as I'm free to read at whim again.

The disillusioning part was whenever the sneaking suspicion that this whole writing/MFA business is just a big pyramid scheme snuck up on me. I try to drive these thoughts out of my head. It's probably true, but what of it? Am I just going to stop writing? Give up on publication? No.

By the end of the conference, I felt like I had been on a conveyor belt, being stamped with literary knowledge along each stop on the assembly line. Watching a bad old Hollywood flick (City Slickers) on the bus on the ride home was the perfect antidote.

I had just a little time between getting home (and cleaning the house) and C's parents coming over for dinner, so I took a quick walk down to the river (okay, I actually snuck out the back door as they were coming in the front door). I needed to get the screech of subways out of my ears and breathe some air that had not (recently) been inside anyone else's lungs.

There was still plenty of snow in the woods, but the ice had shrunk ever so much since the week before, and the light, something in the quality of the light said, yes, longer days, stronger beams, it's coming, it's coming.

How is spring coming along in your neck of the woods?