It's not what you think, no, it's not. I have actually been working away on the wip albeit slowly. No, this is much more serious. This is something that will be read by at least a hundred people - the Christmas Letter. For years it was the sole piece of writing that I accomplished. People read it - or so they tell me. These same people encouraged me to get back to my first love of writing fiction. Well, today is the day before Thanksgiving and I haven't written a word let alone a first draft. It's not as if nothing happen in the year. Regular readers of this blog will know I have seen a fair bit of the world this year - even clocked up enough miles to go gold on the old frequent flyer card. Yet I can't seem to put fingers to keyboard to write.
As the seasoned expat that I am, I know how important it is to keep in touch - even if its just once a year. Yet I'm feeling all quiet and instead of the handmade cards and a four page letter -I just want a signature stamp and a bog standard card. This I know is not good enough. So somehow I will have to write the letter and make the cards...........
Have put the Carols on and maybe I should start baking something Christmasy????
Does anyone put themselves through the torture of summing up a year?
P.S. Update - 1000 words of crappy rough draft written - it's amazing what the egg timer trick will do
10 comments:
Oh dear, I'm just dreadful. I used to write long emails to everyone ... but now that I'm writing (properly) I can see that I did that out of a desire to be writing. So no, I'm dreadful, I'm surprised people remember who I am.
Good luck with yours Liz.
Yippee! Yahoo! That means you're getting enough satisfaction out of real writing not to want to do the Great Round Up. And you're resenting the time it might take because it's stealing it from wip-hours.
Good. Good. Good.
I tend to scribble things like "All well. Son still working. Daughter still at Uni. Oh, and I've got a new book out - here's the ISBN" on all the cards and have done with it.
Liz, I'm going to cheer you up (or maybe not!) by telling you I hate receiving round robin Christmas letters because (egotistically I think!) they don't feel personal to me. I can see completely why you'd write one as writing practise though , and there is the boring stuff about writing the same thing in everyone's cards (you try doing it in German as I have to for my mil!!). But I think you should take heart from this, like Jan says as it means you're doing PROPER writing...
I think the sensible thing would be to point people in the direction of your lovely blog, then they can see for themselves what you've been up to!
Failing that, tell everyone you're too busy this year!!
Hugs, Liz. Jan and Jane have great points, here. And Karen's suggestion of pointing people to your blog is an EXCELLENT one :o) Go for it.
(Hmm - might put that on my RR letter this year - which I send to those who don't keep in touch by other means. Except this year. This year I'm damn well going to boast about the RNA Romance prize!)
I love writing letters and putting them inside Christmas cards which I then post to people I haven't seen all year. But I don't like the letters that are bog-standard, type written and impersonal. Not that effort hasn't been made it's just that I prefer a handwritten, oldfashioned letter.
CJ xx
I gave it up some years ago (apart from a handful of friends and relatives, most elderly, who don't have email). Now everyone except my immediate family gets an email saying 'I'm sending fifty quid to the Red Cross instead of buying Christmas cards, happy Christmas.' There is no altruism involved, either, because I'm so glad to be rid of the chore!
I get really stressed about this every year and like you, I long for a signature stamp! This year I'm thinking of just sending everyone a photo of the four new cats and saying 'hey! look what happened!'
I've never sent a round robin - it would be too tempting to write an anti RR detailing all the bad things we've done.
I agree with Jan Jones too.
Thanks you for the words of encouragement re writing taking off in a different direction.....none-the-less the damn thing is written. I am a glutton for punishment - truely as I also hand write a personel note in each card! Mad I know.
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