A Creative New Year

For reasons too sad and too numerous to go into, members of River Writers are no longer allowed to name years. When we were younger and more foolish, we used to name years things like, "The Year of Having Our Books Published," or, most catastrophically, "The Year of Getting Famous," and what would invariably follow were series of disasters which cost several further years to recover from. (The only exception was one year which Claudia and I entitled "The Year of Adventure," which included a really amazing reading by W.S. Merwin and a concert by Blossom Dearie - apparently if you leave years unspecific enough, and are nonhubristic, the Fates do not hound you in the same way.)

So I will not venture to title 2009, but I am nonetheless having a strong intuition that it is going to be a very good year for creative ventures. Sometimes you just know. 2008 seemed like a year for working things out - at least here at River Writers, we all seemed to be trying things out and stumbling up against some road blocks - not the most prolific year for even the most prolific among us. But I think things did get worked on and are at least beginning to be worked out, and I am now officially expecting Great Things in the New Year. Although we did end the Old Year with a really splendid draft of Bill's new play, which I do not yet believe has a final title, but is a brilliant meditation on changing roles within families over time. (Or if it does now have a final title, Bill, tell us!)

Although I don't believe any of us think of ourselves as particularly political artists or writers, I can't help wondering if the mood of the country over the last year has affected our writing and our mood more than we really have acknowledged, or at least discussed. Up until the very day of the election, gloom and anxiety were hard to avoid; and since the election, we all seem to be on hold, still hearing persistently dark news, but hoping at least, for the best. On the one hand, all the news fed to us seems to be bad; on the other hand, we have lived through several decades of unbelievably rapid change - social change, economic change, political change, and it seems like almost anything could happen, even a drastic change for the better.

But in any case, even more than most new years, I think this is definitely going to be a time for finishing old projects and beginning new ones. We won't label the new year, but I think we will begin it with ideas and energy, and hope that it's a time for going on to the next new thing.