I’m taking the site, Stephen, and I’m sorry…

I know when we bought the site, it was for the novel, and I know that even though it was my title, you had some kind of stake in it too. The novel may get finished someday. I promise to involve you, somehow, if I ever really get it going again. And you’re a co-author, regardless. I actually had some ideas for it not long ago. Good ideas. But these days, like older days, it’s just best to write alone. I don’t think the novel killed my marriage. I don’t think our friendship did either, in spite of the stories I kept hearing then, and second-hand for years later, probably even still. But when the marriage collapsed under its own weight, it smothered the novel too, as you know. The few times I’ve stopped by to visit, I’ve just stared, feeling so sad to see it languishing there, then breathed a few very shaky breaths into it, and closed the door again, turning back around to face the life I live now, and love.

I feel like a liar sometimes when I tell people I’m a writer. I mean, I have the poems, and chapters of new things that have some promise. But it’s hard now to remember the time when I would write for hours a day, and work with you on the nuances of it all. I know I was happy, and I know the writing was good. Yeah, there’s a lot that still needs changing if it ever goes forward, but there’s some great stuff in there too. I feel more like I should say I was a writer, once. But it’s easier to just say I’m a writer, present-tense, because even with that little bit of information given forth, the questions come at me like accusations. Are you published? You mean, like, fiction writing? Have you written a book? Plus, I’m not ready to give up just yet. I hope I never am.

Anyway, this isn’t about the novel. I mean, the site, this site, isn’t about the novel. Somehow this note became all about the damn novel, didn’t it? Well I’m taking the site, and I’m going to write things down, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but so far my life seems to work better that way. The other half of me that analyzes things to death needs to accept that this may be one place where I can let my spirit take me, up, down, and sideways. Or, it’s just one more thing I started that I won’t take care of in the end. That’s poetic in its own way too.

Anyway, like I said, I’m taking the site, Stephen, and I’m sorry.