Fallow Year

Well.  It has been almost a year since I visited this site.  Through most of this year, this place in my mind has lain fallow, undisturbed by any attempt at growing life.  This is good for a farmer’s field—is it as good for a creative activity?  Or is this rather like a muscle that will atrophy if not exercised?

I have to admit, I do not like to write about my life.  There is a reason that I am a science fiction and fantasy writer—or rather, there are many reasons, but the one that is most relevant here is that my own life often bores me.  I get up, I go to work, I come home, I read a book, I go to bed.  The next day I do it all over again.  Why would anyone have any interest in what I do, if I don’t?  And often I don’t.  Viewed from outside my own head, I am a very dull creature.

This is not to say that I am unhappy.  I like my job, and I do not regret the time I spend reading or writing.  I fill my days with thought and story and music, and I am content with that.  But that kind of thing is hard to put into essay form.  That is why this blog is filled with my reflections on my life, rather than reports on my activity.  And even that has fallen silent this year.

I think that is because I have become comfortable with being my own master.  I started this blog because I was advised to do so by a writer I interviewed in college, and I’ve kept it going out of a sense of obligation.  But why, I wonder, should I spend so much time chipping away at telling my own story when I am so eager to tell others?  My time and my creative energy are so precious, and I have learned by now that my writing is much better when I let it flow, rather than when I try to force it.  And so this year I have devoted my time to angels and to artificial intelligence, and occasionally to demons and magic mirrors and space pirates.  I have thrown myself into the joy of writing and tried not to guilt myself too much about what I "should" be doing.

I see the wisdom, of course, in working in several different styles of writing.  Variety is the spice of life.  And so I will try to keep posting here, though there will likely be long stretches in between updates.  But I am to the point that I know my craft, and more importantly, I know myself.  I will write what needs to be written and let the rest come as it may.