From NB

This blog will serve, is now serving, in part, as a way to document my process as I work on this next book. Next Book. New Book. NB. Many months ago I started a Word doc and called it NB; it's where all my notes and thoughts toward the NB have gone since. It's incoherent and often kind of beautiful, like most things. It's a way to Keep Track, like many things. This is from March. This is unedited. I don't usually do things like this, and by this I mean making private thoughts public. But this is only vaguely public, and I think it's a good thing, a necessary thing even. It's a thing that writers do you know:

3.20.07

It’s a big decision to make, a scary thing: to be a writer. It has all these associations and implications and above all: it means I have to try. It means I don’t half-ass. It means I grant myself certain freedoms and passes and I make certain sacrifices and exceptions. It means I accept some sense of struggle and wanting and really actually trying to make things happen. Maybe it means that rejections mean more because I want things more in the first place? Or maybe I’ll continue to not be too phased. I pride myself on my ability to not take things too seriously—it’s pretty damn important. But what does it mean to be a writer. For one, it means prioritizing it. Investing in it. Believing and focusing and admitting it. But back to prioritizing—my projects, my work, letting those things come before anything else. Writing more, reading more, putting my energy into my words again, and believing that I am working toward something. If there’s ever a time to change the way I work, the ways in which I perceive myself, it’s now, or now-ish. I think of people I know who, to me, are writers, whether big and successful or not so hugely successful, but incredibly dedicated and defined as such—regardless of success. Writing is just what they do, what they love and they let that be their thing. I can do that too, I know that I can, and I do believe I’m willing.