the ain country

I've been trying to streamline my reading lately. Usually, I'm sort-of-reading-but-not-getting-very-far in about half a dozen books. I've cut it in half. I'm right now officially only reading three books. Well, one I just started, so two?


This one just sucked me right in, which is weird, since I really couldn't get into it the first time I tried. It's one the hubs has been recommending...he even got a copy for me as a gift. I don't know what happened between that first sitting and this one, but now, I am committed. I think I despised the dreary grocery-store opening scene, couldn't really feel the rhythm.

It is a truly lyrical and fantastic read. The main characters are at once sad, and deeply charming and confused and good, in a twisty way. Like the pervasive twilight that hangs over the mystical "land" they find, the characters and the story that cradles them, are not quite dark, not quite daylight.

I read a bit on Ursula K. Le Guin's site. Man, that lady can write. Perusing her list of published books, I just drooled to see a writing life displayed on my laptop screen. I want that life...

...I think.

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg tells me (yes, she is talking to me!):

"Naturally [your writing voice] will evolve a direction, and a need for one, but it will come from a different place than your need to be an achiever" (40-41).

I put so much pressure on myself. I look at Le Guin's lifetime of writing, and yearn for a list of all my achievements, just like she has, ignoring the fact that she has a life of writing and I am newly born. I am at the beginning place, tumbled into the ain country. And things aren't clear yet.