a new year, and a recipe: chicken marbella
I was this close to writing that I was starting the new year with writer’s block. I realized, just in the nick of time, that this would be a lie. I’ve been writing for the past two weeks, just not here. Or anywhere else you can easily read it.
Instead, while I have been on “vacation” with my kids for the holiday break, I’ve been sneaking away, almost daily, for a few hours each day, to work on two separate manuscripts. I would so love to tell you that at least one of these manuscripts is the novel I’ve been dreaming of writing. Or that one is the memoir I feel I have stashed away in my head. But no. One is a book chapter for a textbook used by medical students. The other is an article about teaching professionalism in oncology.
The good news is that, yesterday, I finished the book chapter. And, as of 3:19 this afternoon, the professionalism article is finished.
Of course, finished is relative. As my good friend Olga – and any of you other published authors – knows too well, edits and revisions will soon follow.
But there has been writing. Even though it’s not the creative version I crave, any writing is good. And I’m happy that 2014 started with writing. I don’t make resolutions, but if I did, tops on my list would be to write more: to write more words, and to write more often. And to write better, of course.