It's been six months since I stopped working. Six peaceful months of not having to answer to someone else. Six months of reorganizing the way I look at my life and what I want to do with my free time. I don't think there was ever any doubt in my mind that I wanted to focus full-time on writing. So far that seems to be working out well. I just submitted a poetry collection (in Norwegian) to a publisher here in Oslo and am hoping for a positive response. If they don't want to publish it, I'll self-publish it as a Norwegian e-book and then I'll self-publish the English translation on Amazon. I've already translated all the poems into English so it's ready to go at any point. This poetry collection is entitled Movements Through the Landscape (Bevegelser gjennom landskapet in Norwegian).
I've also finished writing my garden book as well as my book about growing up in Tarrytown NY. I started the latter well over ten years ago, but what with working full-time, personal challenges and other obligations, it's taken a while to finish it. Now I need to find a publisher for this book as well. I'm thinking about self-publishing my garden book. I tried to get a literary agent interested in it last summer but no go. The publishing world can be as elitist in many ways as the world of academia that I happily left behind. Once you get your foot in the door as a published author, your books continue to get published even though they may not be anywhere near as good as your last one. But that's life. As my friend's father used to say, don't let the turkeys get you down. Good advice. Another piece of good advice for building self-esteem and believing in yourself is to stay off social media. It's just a time-waster and a negative spiral that will drag you down. I'd cancel my social media accounts without any problem except that I have enjoyable contact with a number of American friends and family and I'd miss that. We'll see what time brings.
Here's to a productive 2022 for every creative soul I know. Creativity is hard work but it's incredibly rewarding, no matter what type of creativity it is.
