Summary, Round-Up, Update

Though things have been somewhat sparser here at the blog in the way of frequent postings, I nevertheless, have about 35 tab open and in WORD several “pages” open on the desktop. Though open doesn’t always equate progress. Which means, I’m making stabs at everything, while not much is getting done.

The universal dilemma: Where do I go next?

When my agent dropped my creative nonfiction project I switched to putting together a short story collection. I realized I had A LOT of good material and have managed to group an exciting array of stories around a theme of empowering women my age to keep moving, keep searching, To start again.

Apropos.

Also, in keeping with a fresh start, signed up for classes at OCWW, Off Campus Writers Workshop, the longest-running writing workshop in the US, and am “attending” via Zoom the recorded sessions. Fred Shafer is an excellent way to jumpstart my writing and revision process. There are few writers and speakers for that matter who can convey the abstract art of writing, the concepts behind communication/symbol into language and, indeed, art. His focus this Fall is the Paragraph and its role in serving the whole work. How each sentence builds—or not—to give sense to the whole. In the sessions we look at examples of writing and break down how something works or doesn’t, and if the author meant for it to come out that way, and surmise that perhaps they used a process of discovery. Each class is approx.. 4 hours long and it’s been nice to break the sessions up so that I’m not sitting for that long—at the same time I’m having to work on the lecture every evening.

In addition, you will see changes over at my author website: JaneHertenstein.com as my friend Tammy Perlmutter is engineering a better, cleaner page. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, over on the Tiny House front. The days have been getting shorter and like the squirrels that are frantic in gathering food for the winter (and getting run-over in the process by cars) I’ve suddenly awoken to the fact that time is escaping me. I must make some decisions here in the next week as to how to get into the Tiny House before the clamp-down of cold. Every morning there are more leaves on the ground—though the trees are stubbornly hanging on to green. Everywhere are signs for cornmazes, out front of stores are bins of ripe round pumpkins. Pumpkin spice is everywhere. Like a squirrel running headlong into traffic, I’m going here and there trying to get contractors or someone to help me.

Time is of the essence. Thus, we scaled back the project. Even then that was too much. Until we came back around to my original idea. Basically I will live off the grid. More details about this later. But, for now, the next few weeks will be a busy time of getting things ready for the winter and ordering and installing the few things I’ll need.

Out of the cornmaze and fog, I will survive.