I’m planning a short vacation down to NYC and it’s gotten me thinking: I haven’t been writing. Not really. Not like I normally do in the summer and fall. Normally, the heat and the humidity have always fueled me creatively. Nothing feels better than sitting outside, sweating desperately, with a fedora for shade and a notebook. It seems that without that heat, without the oppressiveness of a  Southern August (and yes, I consider DC part of the South – I’m a New Englander by birth after all), my writing doesn’t flow nearly as easily.

As a matter of fact, writing fiction has felt like pulling my own teeth out all summer. But I’ve been plugging away at a piece (most likely novel length; best described as ‘creative non-fiction’ or ‘very fast and loose memoir’) and slowly but surely it’s (almost) taking shape. I like the quick tone, the acidic attitude of it. It comes off as almost bitter, almost sad, almost angry – but in the end it’s just fact. It’s seen it all, and it knows the truth, and you need to sit down and listen to it tell you how it is. Does that make sense? The piece has it’s own voice, one that feels like a person in your head, one you can argue with (and it argues back). It flutters at times, falters, but the story calls for it. This piece is something I really feel, in my bones, and I want to keep working on it. So here goes, one of my favorite lines to inspire me to get writing tonight: