Last Appearance

Saturday night is the last time I’ll have to read from Too Darn Hot. The last time I’ll have to perform.  Yes, I know I’m lucky to have a venue, etc.  Still I don’t like to do these things as those of you who’ve kept up with this blog know.

I don’t want to spend this week wishing time away, but I find myself thinking things like by this time next Tuesday it’ll all be over. I promised not to go on about this until the day before and of, so I won’t.

The other thing I’ve been feeling is I like living the life of doing nothing.  There’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to go back to writing after Labor Day.  But writers don’t retire.  Sometimes they stop.  Or I think they’ve stopped because I don’t know that they can’t get published anymore.  Others stop because of writer’s block.  And, yes, there is such a thing.  But do writers stop because they don’t feel like writing?  Especially the ones who have no other job?  No other income?  And no interest or qualifications for another career?  I don’t know.

Stopping isn’t really an option for me.  And I’m sure I couldn’t do it anyway.  It’s my life.  I’ve never done anything else.  Don’t want to.  I’m a writer.  Yes, it’s my identity. Boring groups of people say you shouldn’t let your work define you.  Too bad.  I do and always have.  Therefore, if I stopped writing I’d have no identity.  Oh, I guess that’s why the boring groups say you shouldn’t let your work define you.  Still, it does.  Too late to change that now.  I could probably get away with a few years of not writing and still call myself a writer.  But I don’t have a whole lot of years left to play around with.

And then there’s that damn twentieth novel.  I have nineteen published novels and I promised myself I’d have at least twenty before I bit the dust.  So even though I don’t feel like it, and may not feel like it in September, I’ll most likely hit the keys once more.

Sigh.