Indira Ganesan, Soon, 2012
It has been a summer of dog-earing, folding down corners of books and projects that will be finished later. In my home, the rooms are scattered with magazine articles and stories I am coming back to, novels I’ve opened and marked, little dog-ears that promise later, soon, maybe in the winter. I have a book of stories open at the table where I eat meals, and I’ve been on the story for days. The story is very good, but I am compelled after I eat to clear the dishes, and go on to something else, even while thinking, why not just sit and finish? It wasn’t always like this. Books were read. A friend once asked, looking at my books, have you really read all of these? Of course, I replied, surprised, thinking, that was why they were shelved. Who would own books they hadn’t read, I thought. That was decades ago. Now my shelves are full of the partially read, the near forgotten, the new ones.
Once I stayed in this town refusing to leave until I finished my first novel. I did, and began another, moved, then spent ten years moving and finishing the second book. A few more moves, fourteen years pass, and a third gets completed. Now I am back where I first finished, fishing for a fourth. Is it among all the dog-eared and bookmarked projects? The books, the magazines, the garden, the Olympics on tv? The laundry, the groceries, the car tune-up?
And what is that noise outside anyway and when will the tomatoes fruit?
Indira Ganesan 
Nice photo. Not what a writer wants to hear, but . . .
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we want to hear everything! Thank you! It’s all I do sometimes, walk around with phone or ipod & take pictures.
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Sounds like my house, Indira. I had to let my New Yorker subscription drop, “until I can catch up,” I told myself, with it and four other subscriptions I also let drop (very guiltily, I might add). But the New Yorker keeps coming anyway. Something haywire in Podunk, or wherever their subscription dept. is, so I’m skimming off the top instead of reading the growing stack beneath. Also sounds like my writing life. Took me 10 years to finish my second book, and it won’t be published until 12 years from the day I began it. What happened to all that time?
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It’s true, and the cliche of time flying faster a one gets older. But am I right in reading that you have a book coming out? Hurrah!
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Yes, Indira, the book I worked on for 10 years will be published by Viking Penguin in early 2014. The title, for now (we’ll see if it lasts) is Where Rivers Run Sand.
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Oh, such good news! The title is good. I hope there are horses in it.
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A few horses, yes. Good news about your new title too. That makes three for you. I am awed by that!
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Thank you, julene. I watch the horses on the farm in the back and yesterday saw the equestrian rounds on the Olympics — feel bad for the horses but I heard some racing horses enjoy the crowds and winning??
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