All Who Wander Are Not Lost

It's been quite a summer. My main goal at the start of the summer was to compose my second novel (under the working title "Rainbow"). I have managed to write about 10,000 words (a novel is typically at least 50,000; Bluebird was 100,000). I am not disappointed though because I am not working on a deadline. This is my art and it must be given as much time as it needs, even if much of that time is downtime. I am just pleased that I have made such a good start, not only in terms of word count but also in terms of the quality of the story as it has begun to develop.

The summer of 2013 has been full of emotional storms for me. I have fought two major battles with the dragon of despair, one near the beginning of the summer and the other near the end (from which I am just now emerging). Because of my often intense emotional state, I have found myself more driven to write poetry than prose (I'm sure this varies from writer to writer, but it seems to be true for me... poetry being the most intense form of language, in my view).

In addition to the several poems and poetic fragments I have composed this summer, I have also conceived and begun composing what is to be my longest and, in every sense of the word, biggest poem to date: There Go The Gods (my first poem that earns italics rather than quotation marks), which I think of as an epic wrestling with cosmic despair. I very much look forward to completing it and publishing it on this blog in the near future, likely in multiple parts.

Other unexpected beauties of the summer of '13 have included my fascination with and loving tribute to the true 70s wonder twins and my spontaneous and ardent love letter to my generation. Speaking of that last one, the writing of it has also had the effect of helping me to see "Rainbow" in a whole new light: not only as a fairy tale about Martin Lane, as I have described it before, but also in a broader symbolic sense as a fairy tale about Gen-X.

"Rainbow" has been on hold again for awhile, but I'm not stressing about it. I trust that it will be completed in its own good time. After all, Bluebird took 13 years to go from initial conception to final realization. I only first imagined "Rainbow" as a glimmer of an idea last February. I still have the gut feeling and the blind faith that it will number among my best and greatest works. Rainbows are things--beautiful things, promises of hope--that emerge after the storms have passed.