Yesterday, after I posted my blog post, I started to worry.
Did it really have anything to do with writing? Because I had promised myself, and promised you, that this blog would be about writing. And was it too personal? Because after all, I had shown you the contents of my closet. Or half my closet. (The other half of that closet is filled with books.)
What did my clothes have to do with writing? Or my shoes? Or the fact that I had bought a pair of shoes for $7.49 at a thrift store?
And then I thought, my life has become about writing. That’s the change I’m making this year, that’s the commitment I have made to myself. And so everything in my life has also become about writing, and it either enables my writing or – gets in the way of it.
For example, those (adorable pale pink) shoes. If I had actually bought them at Anne Klein, they would have cost closer to $74.90. And that’s part of a plane ticket to a con, or how much I would pay to have a hundred copies of a booklet printed up, or my SFWA dues.
As it is, those shoes cost less than what I was paid for the two poems in Mythic Delirium 23. (So thanks for the shoes, Mike Allen!)
I would still pay a great deal to go to Nepal. But that trip would become part of who I am as a writer. And because I’m a writer, I think I would go to Nepal in a particular way, not staying in the tourist centers, wanting to see as much of the country as I could. Looking for authenticity. Thinking all the time about what I could write about, writing stories in my head, because that’s what I do. That’s the way I live.
And I would probably blog about it. If I could get an internet connection in Nepal?
Theodora Goss 
Making the commitment to writing does open up your world, because everything feeds back into your writing. It anchors your life with its holism. Linking your shoes to your writing shows that quite well!
I’m making a similar commitment this year: new weekly column, short stories almost ready to start going out, novel blossoming on the page. I’m planning on more blogging too, taking all of that time I spent running away from life or not making a future for myself and my daughter and turning it back into the only thing that really makes me feel fulfilled and give my life forward motion.
Which is a long-winded way of saying, thanks for the inspiration!
You’ve brought up a couple of interesting points: one about the nature of blogging; and another about how much of a writer’s life (or that of an artist of any other stripe) is influenced and affected by their being a writer.
This peek into the more private spheres of your life, as you clarified, does in fact have to do with you as a writer. How can it not?
I, too, have had those moments after pushing the enter-button on a blog post, where I’ve wondered whether that was a bit off topic, or too personal, or too much of a pre-holiday-stress induced rant. But what I have come to realize is that even if the post is not specifically about my writing or visual art (or maybe isn’t about it in the way I would have wished on a better day), it is still a reflection of what’s going on in my life; and my life as a private person can’t be completely separated from my life as a writer/artist.
Those who write or make art experience life, to a great extent, through the filters of their craft. And whether posting about a piece of work they’ve completed, or about a pair of shoes, it has still, in some way or ways, has to do with their craft. It can’t really be otherwise.
John, I think this is beautifully said: “taking all of that time I spent running away from life or not making a future for myself and my daughter and turning it back into the only thing that really makes me feel fulfilled and give my life forward motion. ”
We all need to run toward rather than away from, don’t we?
Lynn, I think this is so right: “and my life as a private person can’t be completely separated from my life as a writer/artist.” And I think you’re right that we tend to experience life through the filters of our art. Especially when you make the sort of commitment that John is talking about.
And I think that’s a good thing . . .