Looking Back

I’ve just spent nearly all of an afternoon looking back on all the INK blogs that I’ve written, trying to get a sense of what I’ve been doing, thinking, and writing about for six-plus years.  My internal monologue went,   “I don’t remember writing about that…..”  “Did I really say….?”   “I’d forgotten about her…..”  My early posts had no photos and no links.  I couldn’t do the simplest things beyond clicking the letter keys.

 I’ve loved writing for INK. I loved having time and space each month to natter on about books, writing, being a writer, and even tangential topics.  Out of 66 such natterings:

• I wrote about writing and ‘being a writer’ thirty-four times: Research Rapture, fiction vs nonfiction, writing long and short, chronic procrastination, author visits, finding stories while traveling, and a whole lot more.

• I used twelve postings to review new and favorite books. 

• I minded other’s people’s business, interviewing six authors, two illustrators, four media specialists, and three editors and publishers. 

• Five times I wrote about that mercurial topic, Miscellaneous, including my author visit trip to Africa, my great-nephew’s favorite nf books, and a photo-illustrated tour of my office.  

I’ve learned a lot from all that musing – for how do you know what you think until you write it down?  And I’ve learned a whole lot more by reading every single one of the other INK authors’ blog postings about books, writing, and Miscellaneous too. I’ve read their books, met some of them, and hope to meet more as our paths cross at conferences and in distant cities.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the last six-plus INK years have brought me five book contracts, with four of those books already out there in the marketplace.  Writing about writing, and doing it to a monthly deadline, may have helped my chronic condition of procrastination, though perhaps it should have had its own category of “not-writing.” 

All in all, it’s been great fun.  Thanks, Linda Salzman, for thinking up INK and running it so well.  Thanks to the other authors and to our loyal readers. However, I’m not quite finished: we still have two months to go.