Saturday, October 10, 2009

Here's a however for you

This is supposed to be the weekend I write write write, the writing interrupted only by household chores and errand running. I've been working on a story and I wanted to make a push to finish the first draft. With Teresa away and no pressing engagements, the idea was to really hunker down. You sense a however coming, don't you? Here it is.

With Teresa away and because of the nature of this particular trip, I can't seem to settle down and focus on writing. Too preoccupied with worrying about her safety and counting the hours till she gets back home. As I've already noted, she's in Honduras with a fact-finding/solidarity delegation. (In this photo from yesterday she's meeting with representatives of the anti-fascist resistance.) The situation in Tegucigalpa is volatile. Tense. Violent. So I find myself constantly checking for updates and emails, and watching the Spanish-language TV news, and so on. I couldn't be prouder of the work she does and the person she is, and if we can't be together on our 21st anniversary tomorrow there couldn't be a better reason, but I seem to be caught in a perfect storm of obstacles to concentrating on writing: my Jewish propensity for worrying and expecting the worst, combined with my habitual lack of discipline, combined with my perpetual fatigue, combined with the whole set of inexcusable excuses for not writing that I share with most other writers.

Apparently I came here to confess. And because blogging is the next best thing to writing. So there you have it. I'll try to make the best of it. For one thing, since I'm too jittery to sink into a storytelling trance, I'll see if I can't put together another blog post about some bookish matters. Who knows, maybe that'll settle me down and I'll manage to crank out a few hundred words yet.