As you may have noticed . . .

I've been on hiatus for a couple of weeks. I'm taking some time to set up my apartment, figure out what writing project I want to work on next, and taking it easy in general. I love this blog, my blogger friends (and family!), and sharing my writing here, but I'm not sure when I'll be back. But rest assured that . . .

 I WILL BE BACK.

Random Reads

I always keep a list of books somewhere that I mean to read. In high school, I kept the list tacked to my wall. In college, I kept it in my journal. Now, I keep it on Goodreads.

But no matter where I store it, the list doesn't ever seem to grow any shorter. In fact, it only gets longer and longer and longer, and it develops a desultory stink about it. No matter how excited I am when I first type a new book into my list, the excitement never lasts. The longer the book sits on my list, the less I want to read it and the more it feels like a chore or an obligation. Right now, the most tenured book on my list is One Hundred Years of Solitude. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'd rather sift through my old trig textbook than crack the spine of Solitude.

However, there's something truly invigorating about choosing to read a book that I've never heard of before, a book that I know absolutely nothing about. I decided to snatch Barbara Vine's The Minotaur off the shelf at the KU library purely because it was a stranger to me.

Before I started The Minotaur, I'd never heard of Vine and I didn't realize that the book was a mystery. All I knew was that I loved the first sentence of the jacket blurb: "As soon as Kerstin Kvist arrives at remote, ivy-covered Lydstep Old Hall in Essex, she feels like a character in a gothic novel." Awesome.

So far, I like it. I want to know what's wrong with John Cosway, and I want to know where Kerstin will find the labyrinth, and I want to know what's locked inside the library. Right now, that's good enough for me.

In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of walking, sweating, swimming, and editing, with a little baking thrown in (pictures are coming, I promise!). Mostly I'm just sweating, but that's July for you. More specifically, that's July in an apartment with a single window unit, weak fans, and a dryer constantly running outside the front door!  :P

Editing: A Short, Short Post

I've been doing a few freelance editing jobs this week. They're keeping me busy (oh, boy, are they keeping me busy!), but there's something I find deeply satisfying about revising someone else's writing. It's lovely to take a knotted, dense, nearly meaningless sentence and force it to unfurl itself into clarity. I enjoy making it possible for a reader to see through grammatical snarls and into what it is the writer really means.

It's tricky work, and tiring, but I love helping others slip into the flow and clarity necessary to expressing themselves. The trick isn't to make the writer sound like me or any other "good" writer: it's to help them sound just exactly like themselves.

Vacation

For the Fourth, I spent spent a long weekend in Milwaukee. I was doing a dual-visit, meeting up with a couple of old friends (Jennifer and her husband Mike) and visiting some family (my aunt, uncle, and cousins) who live there. I was also there to experience Summerfest, a massive annual music festival beloved by Milwaukee natives. At Summerfest, I heard a couple of great bands I'd never heard of, and I heard a few terrible bands whose names I made a point of forgetting! I also got to see Devo (they were wacky--what's the deal with Booji Boy?!) and Modest Mouse (an old favorite from my college days) in concert; they were both excellent! But the best part of the weekend was definitely seeing people I don't usually get to spend time with.

I also enjoyed being away from home and work and my everyday life. I have a theory that vacations are rarely about the experience of seeing someplace new; usually, they're about home. They're about taking a break from the places and people you see every day so that you realize how much you miss the familiar faces, the familiar landscapes, the familiar rooms you usually live with. I usually take vacations less to broaden my horizons and more to re-familiarize myself with the horizon I live under everyday.

Wisconsin was a beautiful place, full of lush vegetation and long, rolling hills and gorgeous, glimmering lakes. But one of my favorite views from vacation was driving down Mass Street toward my apartment on Monday night!