The Reality of Returning to Writing

Sorry. I’m not getting much out of writing stories this time around... The trail of a blog I left behind last time meant/means so much to me that I wonder why the change. Some thoughts?

It’s so much easier to write and publish and communicate this time around. Perhaps that means it couldn’t be as meaningful. Last year I had only an hour of computer a day, thanks to my 800 HUF library card. I'd compound and compact stories for days and weekends on end, so I'd have one glorious tale to tell by the time I let my fingers race across the keyboard, complete with inverted Z and Y.

This time, there’s a cosmopolitan city full of distractions galore.

I spend all day look at words of all sorts on a computer screen. It’s hard to want to do more of it after a long day of work.

The stories simply aren’t as good. They aren’t as adventurous. For the most part, I understand what’s going on in this country now. There isn’t as much of that glorious uncertainty that makes stories of retrospection so much fun.

And there aren’t any characters. I have a plethora of friends here, of course, almost more than the whole population of Heves. Old and new. Young and old. American and Hungarian and any other sort of English-speaker. But no characters. Look carefully at those who peppered my stories last year:

English Peter.
German Peter.
Old Barbara.
Smiling Betti.
Pretty Petra.
And especially, Super Gitta.

People weren’t just themselves. Coupled with an adjective, they were characters. Persona attached in a simple adjective, they were somehow larger than life. Figments of creation. Just a part of a story, an animation in my story. I couldn’t even comprehend most of the time that they had their own stories...

An update on two of those characters?

I called Super Gitta this afternoon. She’s good. Probably studying too much exams. I only recognized her voice two or three times the whole conversation. I hope she comes to Budapest this summer and we can have the chance to get together and talk.

Thanksgiving Elli and I are planning a little backpacking trip in Romania. Maybe out of one of the Transylvanian cities I’ve been to, maybe out of somewhere new. It’ll be her second career hike, after last year’s successful Bukk adventure.

(And as you can see in the picture, we're in the middle of a heatwave! Apparently it's coming from North Africa. Toasty warm!)