Or maybe ends. Summer means fewer readers, so it’s a good time to take a break, the first since I started this blog. Holding the Light readers, if you’re not already out of town, I’d like your ideas about what to do with the blog in the fall. End it? Resume as is? Limit posts to the most popular topics? Add more writing prompts? Other ideas? Remember, only comments posted on the blog itself are saved. I’ll make notes on Facebook comments.
from a June 2024 walk in Whittier
I started Holding the Light (also the title poem of my second book) in mid-2012. It had been two years since I’d retired from fulltime teaching, and I was ready to set myself the task of becoming a consistent writer. For most of my life, writing often came last: after family, after jobs, after mopping the kitchen floor. The blog’s been successful in that regard: I’ve maintained a minimum of two posts per month for twelve years. And its photos are almost all mine too. It’s been fun. And work.
I originally planned to quit after one hundred posts—mission accomplished—but Jana Clark asked, “Why? Why not continue?” Jana’s a master writing teacher, so sometimes I listen to her.
Holding the Light is, as John McPhee puts it, an old person project, intended to give me purpose and keep me alive. I do NOT believe that I won’t die so long as I’m writing, no matter what McPhee says. Full disclosure: McPhee’s 93 and still writing, so maybe…
I wrote 800-word or less essays. As of June 2024, I’ve published 395 such pieces. This one makes 396. If you’re doing the math, that’s more than two per month. I sometimes posted weekly. Partly Jerry Garner’s fault: two weeks is too long to wait, he said. Post more often, he said. Easy for him to say. He’s been a faithful reader. So have Kathleen Cain and Bob Jaeger, and they frequently comment. Just saying, Jer.
Those 395 pieces total over 300,000 words, more than enough to fill three novels, but I’ve never had a novel in me. I’m a hundred-yard dash writer, good at getting in and getting out. My posts were whatever I wanted to write about. I dreaded running out of ideas. That never happened, a gift from God. Everything posted was revised, proofed and read aloud. Despite all that, typos and faulty writing slip through. The best time to find such flaws is right after the piece is published, when Phil Normand, my editor, reads it.
Posts on aging, politics and humor have had the most views and comments. Memoir and neighborhood topics are next. These are WordPress stats: Facebook or Linked In responses not included.
I recently started a Substack for my Grandmother Poems, sometimes verse and sometimes prose: https://patriciadubrava.substack.com I’m not sure where Grandmother’s headed either. I have other writing projects: a painfully slogging memoir essay, translations, and I still write poems from time to time. Once a poet, always a poet, they say. Apparently, I cannot be released from that bondage. Hence, no fear of dying if I quit the blog, at least not immediately, God willing.
June 2024 sunset at Fuller Park
So, my loyal readers, this is it, for at least two months, or maybe forever. You have kept me going all these years. For that, I thank you. Some of you have subscribed to Grandmother, for which I am also thankful, and that grumpy old lady will continue over summer. I look forward to your ideas on the blog and maybe you’ll hear from me again in September.
Twelve years is a long time. I wish there’d been a retirement benefit.