Weather Report

Since Carole and Kami both asked.

I haven't done much in the way of writing lately. I've been picking myself up from the utter failure that was Script Frenzy, which is rather like trying to get back on a horse that just threw me and is rolling its eyes and flattening its ears in promise of another rough ride.

I do have a couple of story ideas, one in answer to the Garden Story challenge Carole and Kami issued a few months ago. The other is from a dream I had about the same time that has nothing to do with gardens, but quite a bit to do with West Texas, and since I just returned from there the story is nudging me.

I think today is the day when I might venture to swing back into the saddle. I received my first issue of Victoria magazine a few days ago, a newly reinstated magazine that disappeared about four years ago and had once been my favorite. While most of the issue is about china patterns and the joy of blue and white in decorating, there is an article by writer Jan Karon. I haven't read her books (she writes the Mitford series, among others), but I might be looking them up soon because the article is so lovely in its imagery and tone. Moreso, however, Ms. Karon has this to say:

When I write, I dive headlong into the work as into a river, where I swim for my life or, depending on the tenor of the story, float on my back, gazing at clouds. I inhabit that river for five hours or two minutes, ten, or thirty, whatever the day may yield. When there's nothing more to say, feel, or conjure, I make my way to shore, trying to separate fiction from fact, and get on with the business of living.

I love this quote, not only the imagery of writing as a river, but the idea of not holding myself to a certain time frame for writing or a certain word count. This idea, more than anything, is coaxing me back to writing when I have so much else tugging at me to do and see. I know I could fit five, ten, fifteen minutes of writing in a day amid dog-walking, weed-pulling, child-playing, book-reading, journal-writing, and all the other things I like to do during the day. Half a page or six pages, whatever comes out. I could be happy with that for now, just to get back into it.