The Joy of Lex

So, I began my last post with “Whew!  An arduous couple of days have kept me away from the site…” a phrase which would constitute just as apt an opening for this entry – why is it that the majority of my days fall into the category of “arduous” lately?

Anyhow, it is time to conclude the navel-gazing here at the Burro by posting my last two goals for the year.  As it happens, they are both goals pertaining to written language – clearly the deepest and most abiding of my passions.

 

The first goal is a reading goal, and of course it involves the infamous list.  The list turned 12 just before I turned 30, which also makes it one of the most constant elements in my life – it’s lasted longer than my parents’ marriage (and my own, so far), or my tenure at any school, or the time I’ve lived in any town… My reading on the list tallies more than the combined reading of all the classes I took to become a licensed teacher of English… and this is the year I finish it.

There are 18 books remaining on the list, so this is an entirely attainable goal – although I may at some point have to forego my habit of alternating books designated by the list with books selected purely for pleasure.

 

The other goal concerns writing.  I’ve always had ambitions to pursue writing in a serious way, and I’ve usually put it off for some unspecified time in the future when I would be “ready”, having learned enough, and lived enough, to be able to write worthy prose.  As a result, my career highlights, through age thirty, consist of this blog, a couple of semi-embarrassing adolescent manuscripts, and a few scraps of poetry that aren’t too displeasing.

Well, ready or not, the time has come to write, and in the spirit of National Novel Writing Month, I have decided to use a “forced writing” approach:  my goal is to write and post 12,000 words of fiction this year. It is a modest goal, but I find myself unwilling to abandon craft in favor of raw output  the way a project like the one-month novel requires.

An approach I find much more appealing is the way Brendan Adkins of Ommatidia combines forced writing with constrained writing (in his case, a 101-word limit).  This seems to combine the motivational factor I’m seeking with a requirement for discipline – often overlooked as a teacher, and still one of the best.

Since this is my established conduit to the interweb, a fiction page seems to be in the offing here at the Burro…

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