The past few years have been a whirlwind of activity, and they’ve brought into my focus that strange dichotomy that many writers experience: the split between living a life and producing the artificial lives of Story. Sometimes the most difficult, even boring periods yield productive fruit, while the epochs of fully absorbed living, content or not content, leave little impulse to write at all.
That is how I have spent my years post-pandemic. Some moments were incredibly painful and some joyous, but my inclination to write has been a path I’ve let grow thick with weeds. Only now, as I leave behind a master’s degree and plod in the middle of a Ph.D., have I found the desire to clear the undergrowth and walk that trail again.
And so, I clean out my rejection letters for short stories from 2021, and begin again the funny business of writing and publishing short stories. We’ll see how it goes.
Desmond, Write 