I’m not gone, just busy.

Apparently I haven’t updated for 10 days. Apart from writing group a whole week ago, I haven't written anything either. Well, that’s not exactly true. Last Wednesday I drove to Montreal early in the afternoon so as to avoid the rush hour to pick up the diarist known as darkomen from the airport. As a result, I had more than two hours to wait, so I spent part of it finishing a story I started in writing group the week before.

But the whole writing thing has been a bust. The group that Kathy got me started in last fall terminated my membership because I wasn’t keeping up the necessary submission/critique ratio. I’m just as glad, actually, because although I like the idea of a critical audience offering constructive suggestions, I realize that I don’t take criticism well. Many of the comments I received were critical of those things which make my writing distinctly me, ie. the fact that I like really long, grammatically correct, sentences. Some people wanted more plot development, dialogue, and I got the feeling that they weren’t really reading my work as much as wanting it to sound the way they would write it.

Which brings me to the other point: I was supposed to critique a number of pieces myself each month and I found this to be a daunting task simply because I found so much of the writing submitted to be so terribly under par. I would start to read a submission and think to myself, “This is like a bad blog entry. I can’t critique it without totally tearing it apart.” Knowing how much I hate criticism, I felt I couldn’t do that to anyone else. So yesterday when I checked that email account, I found the letter that dismissed me, gently, from the group. I am actually relieved.

Anyway, I’ve been busy entertaining my visitor. We’ve been doing a lot of walking, and my lower back is feeling it. This business of getting older is for the birds. It rained the first few days of his visit, which sucked, and on Saturday we traipsed all over Montreal in a drizzle. We walked up the mountain looking for the Orat0ry, saw the Imagine exhibit at the Musée des Beaux Arts, plus an exhibit of pre-Colombian artifacts (which was extremely cool), and after a delicious vegetarian meal walked back to the bus station in a downpour.

The sun came out yesterday, and in the morning we wandered around the Parc de la Gorge C0atic00k. The internet site had told us that it opened in late April but when we got there the place was locked up tight, so we hopped the fence and took our tour anyway. On the way out, though, I ripped my sweatshirt, which was kind of sad, and I have a nasty bruise on my thigh from sitting on the fence.

I will miss my guest when he goes, which is on Thursday. I’m going to miss him a lot.

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