June slides by

This has been an impossible month, with Samantha and me putting the apartment on the market and trying to imagine just what is next. My reading has taken a turn toward the bucolic, with lots of food related books (both old and new) making it to the bedside table. More about those books later. We've both been separately grappling with the idea of writing, and imagining that our new rural surroundings may aid in that process. Of course, this is a fantasy. Samantha, though has been working on it all along - her blog has become more than a dumping place for the daily brain clutter, or a rehash of interesting links. It's really an investigation of the process of baking, and of becoming a baker, from the inside out. What's more, she's developing readers, well beyond the well-wishing friends and relatives that form every (well most) writers' first audience. I'm just a bit jealous.

I've been wrapped up in the appraisal of the archive of a well-known horror writer. In fact a very nice, very literary chap. This constant exposure to the process of writing, seems to be having an effect on the way I organize my thoughts. Certainly, it helps to demystify the workings of the writers' mind when you see the constant revising, the complete but discarded novels, the thousands of pages written before recognition reveals itself. When craft is laid out in front of you like this, it seems more possible, but much more work.