Last night was writers' group at Borders. I haven't been in three weeks (or is it two?) for various reasons. It's always refreshing, though, to meet up with other writers and realize again that you aren't the only one who toils away, who has bad days and good days, or bad months and good months as the case may be. I am in a bad month. Don't know why, precisely, but I've found that often you just have to let the muse be for a while. She doesn't want to work, but she's always paying attention and gathering stuff for later use.
I finally broke down and bought Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel. As if I don't have enough writing books. I also bought The Resilient Writer by Catherine Wald, creator of rejectioncollection.com. I can always use a book that tells me how [Insert Famous Writer] got rejected 1200 times before selling that first novel that went on to win a Nobel Prize and sell a gazillion copies (it's my fantasy, don't argue with it).
I barely have time to read the books I already own, but that doesn't stop me from buying more. I am currently reading Ann Patchett's Bel Canto in between thesis reading. I'm going through a literary phase at the moment, probably because of the saturation with Virginia Woolf.
Another thought I've had lately, as I make the rounds, is whether the people who consistently appear on certain blogs (I mean innumerable times over the course of a day) ever write anything or if they just wish they did. Then again, maybe they are like me and the muse is on hiatus for a while. One day, they'll stop appearing and then I'll wonder if they've been hit by a car or if they've had the one-in-a-million idea that won't let them go until they finish the book. And then a year or two later they'll pop back in and announce that they just landed a big agent and their book went to auction. That's what's so cool about being a writer: you always have a chance to write and sell THE ONE, the book that makes all the difference, the book that makes the umpteen manuscripts under your bed into the University of Writing and makes it all worthwhile. Too cool.