I am working on two writing projects at the moment (around the day job, the kids, the endless house-keeping and cooking)…
One is my next collection of poems and the other is less simple – a project involving over a decade of journals. I am scanning a whole lot of journal pages from 1999-2012…it will be a very visual book. This project is tricky – I haven’t quite found my way with it yet. It’s like it isn’t sure what it wants to be….I don’t want it to be a ‘how to’ about journaling, because I don’t find those books especially helpful myself…plus I don’t think I have much to add to that canon….however it may have elements of that. I am writing some prose pieces to sit amongst the scanned journal pages, but I’m not sure they are right in tone. It’s like I am putting together a book that is almost devouring itself – like the OUROBOROS.
I’m both sharing parts of my journals and yet critiquing them and journaling and the creative process all at once. It’s all very messy and more than a little scary, however I’m going to keep chipping away at it and trust that as I work the shape of the book will become clear. Basically, I am trying to write the sort of book I would be excited to find in a bookshop….full of images, honesty, ruminations on creative process, thoughtful mess.
In the meantime, I take comfort from writers who have gone before me.
‘Any writer who knows what he is doing isn’t doing very much.’
-Nelson Algren
&
‘The furtherest out you can go is the best place to be.’
-Stanley Elkin’
Helen Lehndorf 
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