My major social outlet is writing and editing Visions of Paradise, because its 130 readers provide a lot of feedback, primarily through letters of comment and mailing comments. I enjoy that socialization a lot and have no desire to return to the solitary lifestyle I favored in the 70s and 80s when I spent every available free moment writing fiction.

But I still have a deep passion for fiction-writing, as I discussed on 3/2/05, and there are times when I think that I should return to it on a more regular basis than I have done the past two decades, which amounts to writing a single novelette each year, usually in the summer. Recently one of my readers sent me an email telling me that he has abandoned his own major fannish activity of the past 30 years, which was cartooning. He was an excellent cartoonist, appearing in all of the major fanzines, and garnering the type of acclaim that my writing could never achieve. But he threw it all away to write science fiction, which sparked more than a bit of envy at his decision.

But I do not think I could ever make a decision like he made, no matter how important fiction-writing is to me. I also enjoy writing and editing nonfiction, both the personal natter and the book reviews/criticism, and the social interaction has become very important to me too. And, let's face it, even my moderate success with nonfiction has greatly eclipsed my total lack of success at writing fiction. So while I am trying to fit more fiction-writing into my school year, that is not easy to do, and I have managed perhaps one or two hours per week so far this month.

But retirement is probably only a half-dozen years away, at which time I anticipate having ample time for both fannish and fiction writing with no regrets that either activity is eating away time from the other. In the meantime, I’ll keep on plugging along...