Should I write about This? Should I write about That?

I’ve had a very full week in many ways… got back to Tallahassee 11 p.m. Friday (detoured through Vidalia for a library visit), on Saturday afternoon conducted a creative nonfiction workshop (excellent turnout!) at Leon County library, plunged into piles and piles of work, went to Cairo yesterday to visit the Roddenbery Library (listening to free CDs from the Florida Folklife Collection while I kept one eye on the mpg meter), and so forth.

Right now some of my writing rules are shot out of the water. When I wake up, my brain is buzzing with work. When I go to sleep, that’s the case, as well. It’s as much as I can do to focus on this month’s submissions for the critique group. I have a manuscript that’s this close to being ready to submit; I don’t have the focus for it, and since it’s a holiday theme (an essay about a Thanksgiving meal, long ago and far away), I’m losing the last window of opportunity to find a home for it until next year.

I have other ideas that aren’t even scratched out on paper… just the blather of a writer saying, “I should write a piece about…” or “This would make a great story.”

It’s all part of the ebb and flow… I may have my focus 100% in one direction right now, but I’m having fun. I also try to note what I see as I drive around Georgia. I may get a recorder for my iPod so I can observe things like the spindles of cut hay on a shorn field, stacked like back-to-school pencils, or the one-room clapboard churches with hand-lettered signs announcing special prayer services, or the particular dusty yellow light of late afternoon filtering through trees that curtain a quiet two-lane road.

(Anyone else noticing how SUV and truck drivers are suddenly driving much slower?)

My office is a comical disaster — an unpacked suitcase, piles of stuff tossed on the futon that was perfectly clean two weeks ago, thick stalagmites of paper and detritus.

Leon County library got back with me about my program not being on the library calendar. It’s because it wasn’t a library-sponsored event. I understand that from the library’s point of view; I assume it means that then no one thinks the library is endorsing the program. From the presenter’s point of view, it’s a different perspective. Nice for them to respond, of course, and the room was just right. Next time I’m sneaking in candy — nobody would have noticed.