It's a Love/Hate Thing

I love summer vacation now as much as I did when I was a kid. I love having no schedule to follow, no homework to review, projects to oversee, papers to sign, no special time to get up. Then again part of me hates summer, mostly because there is no schedule to follow and with no schedule my writing gets sidelined quite a bit. Although I did manage to get a draft together for my group before I leave this morning. Yes, after months of writing and talking about it I finally leave for the Kenyon Review fiction worksop with Ron Carlson today. I spent last night printing out stories I want to work on and getting notebooks together and copying work onto a CD and selecting reading material ( always the most crucial aspect for a writer going on vacation). Here's what I'm taking:

2 library books that will be due a couple days after I return: "Be Mine" by Laura Kasischke and "The God of Animals: A Novel" by Aryn Kyle both of which are on my never-ending list of books to read

"Five Skies" by Ron Carlson

"The New Yorker" summer fiction issue

"Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

"Glimmer Train" summer issue

"Now You Love Me" stories by Liesel Litenburger (which has aslo been on my list for quite a while)

I'm hoping that there will be much more writing going on that reading but I'm covered either way.

Not sure how much I will be generating new work versus revising existing drafts but I brought the current projects that are hot for me right now:

- "Learning Curve" a novel-in-stories

- 2 of my best stories so far that are part of a collection

- a draft of the novel I wrote in thirty days last November. Might be a good chance to sit down and just read it through and see what I've got.

The latest issue of "The Writer" has an interview with Ron Carlson in it and reading it just reaffirmed my decision to do this. I love everything he has to say about the writing process plus I love his own writing. His stories are in my permanent collection that I turn to again and again to show me how to write.

If I have time, I'll blog while I'm there, but if not you'll hear all about when I return.