Blogdaughter Michele of Letters from New York City asks about my Daily Love Notes:

Do you continue to do this because you want to or because you promised yourself or someone else you would?

Also, do you ever force yourself to write one because either we (your readers) or your wife or you might be disappointed if you don't?

Actually, I wrote 365 Love Notes between July and October of 2006 when I was still working at the pizza place & had a lot of "sitting on my ass time" to play with. I planned to publish them here every day in 2007.

I started writing them again in July of 2007, but at the end of the month, I got this new job. The thing about this job is that, although it's not physically taxing, I have to stay sharply mentally focussed for the whole time I'm there, which is generally 10-12 hours a day, five days a week. Outside of that time, it's hard to find the will, much less the desire, to focus on anything at all, because I feel so drained.

I stopped composing new Love Notes in mid-August because they just weren't flowing right, and forcing it wasn't helping.

My original intent with the first batch of Notes was to publish them in a book and then buy an island in the Bahamas with the royalties, but I didn't know how to go about doing that (the publishing, not the island-buying), had no one to ask, and found that nearly all information sources on the topic dealt with publishing either novels or "how to" types of non-fiction. Self-publishing is out because I know my limitations, and self-promotion is not something I do well. So I contented myself with posting them here, just so I could have the satisfaction of letting other people enjoy them.

As for disappointment... well, there's certainly some of that involved. I've always believed I can write ANYTHING if I try hard enough, but after composing over 400 little love-bites, it's amazingly difficult to avoid repetition. Add in my mostly-missing energy level and my all-too-short time for recreational writing, and it's just not a mountain I can climb anymore.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do after the end of the year. I may start posting the ones I have for 2008 and then start trying to write one a day to finish out the year. Or I may just let it go after December 31st. I don't know yet.

Not a very satisfying answer, but it's all I've got. We'll just have to wait & see.

Posted by: Harvey at 08:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 443 words, total size 3 kb.