I came home from Clarion West with the goal of writing a lot of words. And I did. I wrote lots and lots and lots of really bad words. I should count it up sometime.

I think it was beneficial. I don't think most of what I wrote during the end of 2008 and 2009 will ever see the light of day, but that's okay. I am ready to write, revise and begin to submit again.

Other than the story I sold in 2009 and the story I collaborated on that was sold last month, I haven't submitted anything since early 2008, actually having pulled everything I had out at market and leaving the stories to lie dormant on my hard drive. This was a safe place for them to be, and as long as I wasn't subbing or showing any of my work to anyone else, those stories were safe, too.
And I was safe.

There was a while there during 2008 and 2009 where the only identity I had that I was sure of was that I was a mother and a writer, and I have struggled with the feeling that I had lost at least one of those things because I had been foolishly trusting of people's promises. I'll always be my children's mother, but oh, it's not the same as it was. I didn't want to lose my identity as a writer. I know it's foolish--this isn't something anyone but me can take away, and I wasn't about to. But fear isn't always logical.

Currently I'm in the process of revising a short story and writing a novel. Several Bay Area (and slightly further south) writers are writing novels together in a noveling challenging. Vylar Kaftan, Rachel Swirsky, Erin Cashier, Christopher Reynaga, perhaps Katherine Sparrow (who was already working on a novel) and I are all writing novels over the next six to eight weeks. At the end of March we're all getting together for a writing retreat where we will retreat and write. So it will be a busy two months, but it's wonderful, really, to be able to associate with writers whom I admire and not write in the isolation I had once known.

By it's very nature, writing is an isolatory practice, but it's sure nice to have people around with whom to chat.