How have you been? I’ve been sick a week with a yet unidentified non-infectious virus. No writing done but lots of thoughts on same. As I struggle to get back to the keyboard, this timeline presents itself:

August 25, 2016: Submit anthology book proposal to either Chronicle Books or Heyday Books

September 2, 2016: Submit essay to the Bellevue Literary Review

January 5, 2017: Submit proposal for a different book to the University of Nevada Press

2017 may be the year of the book proposal for me, whereas 2016 was the year of writing newspaper and magazine articles.

This is a new writing world for me, something with far off deadlines and hope that must be sustained. Proposals take months to write as do any responses to them. Publisher after publisher must be contacted, with little expected. Still, I must write, and my brother’s experiences (internal link) gives me encouragement. All I  control is my writing and the quality of my research.

I’ll end with Kafka:

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”