Myth, the Universe, and Everything

Between the hyphens is a bit that I'm copying over from my Kaz's Summer Camp check-in comment this week, because it'd feel too sad to type it twice.

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I wrote a book review. Plus column!

Minus column? I realized, in looking at my saved fiction files, that aside from my ongoing role playing games, I've created nothing of my own since last June. A whole year has gone by without any unique creative input from me. (I'm cowriting that novel, which I'm behind on, as seems to be my wont these days, but it's a collaborative effort in someone else's world, not my own. It's a great project and I'm glad I'm doing it, but it's not -mine- in the way that other fiction has been mine...)

I'm hoping this is my hump, that this realization is the one that motivates me forward. I'm hoping.

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I'm proud to be working on BT, don't get me wrong. I love cowriting with lyster. But I need to do *something* to get back on the writing horse, to write things that are uniquely mine.

In the meantime, copyediting is piling up and a couple of reference book essays and a slew of obituaries are waiting for me. Here we are, back again to the learning-to-balance side of life. If I get back to blogging this week, I want to talk about priorities, so maybe bouncing ideas off of all of you will help me figure out how to manage my work and writing time better.

I read an article, probably in the New York Times Book Review and probably in 2001 or 2002 -- whenever Zadie Smith was the new "Hot Young Writer" -- about the term "Hot Young Writer." (If only I could track it down, I'd link to it here.) The contributor wrote about how suddenly, a "Hot Young Writer" would be an "overnight" success -- despite the fact that they, like all of us, had slaved away at their apprenticeships. The benefit to them is that they were noticed early. The detriment? That at some point, you're no longer the "Hot Young Writer." Your second novel might not live up to the expectations of the first as you hit a sophomore slump. Then where will you be? Still at young writer, perhaps, but no longer hot? Or perhaps you'll hit 30 (the age I believe the contributor selected). You might still be hot, but you're not a prodigy any more.

As some folks noticed (via lj's and facebook's helpful reminder system), it was my birthday yesterday, and I've hit that fateful number the NYTBR contributor labeled as no-longer-young. A lot of my identity since I was sixteen has been about doing things early, ahead of the curve (which is, I suppose, a common experience for people who go to Simon's Rock). So, as I told my father over the phone, it's odd to just be a regular grown-up.

On the other hand, I feel pretty much like, for right now, I'm exactly where I want to be in my life -- give or take 30,000 words (which kaz_mahoney has faith I can write -- and with her encouragement, maybe I'll actually do the YaNo challenge this year, since NaNo is definitely not going to fit into my schedule). Do I need to do things to improve? Well, yes. If you've got nothing left to learn, and nowhere left to grow, it takes a lot of the fun out of life! So I think I'll get back to devonmonk's goals strategy: setting reachable goals and shooting for the moon and trying to land in between. This year's already set up to be a great year -- a huge, life-changing year -- and I'm excited for the possibilities.

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Edit: I forgot to wish jimhines a happy book birthday! The Mermaid's Madness is officially out today. (I got my copy last week and loved it.)