I'm writing from our backyard this morning, keeping an eye on Lucky the bunny, making sure he isn't nibbling my petunias or digging up the hens & chicks I just transplanted.
In spite of the glare on my laptop, I chase the sun around the patch of moss we call a lawn, soaking up warmth and wishing sunlight could reach through the small windows of our low-slung, fir shaded 1970's ranch house.
My flowerbed is dry and desperate looking, in all honesty -- nothing like the lush swaths of annuals that bloomed wherever my Great Aunt Minnie lived.
In my mind's eye I can still her signature cosmos towering over marigolds the size of salad plates; and daisys, dianthus, snapdragons & sweetpeas stepping their way down to the hens & chicks that clucked along, forming a natural border to her patch of heaven.
While I also remember Aunt Minnie for her girlish giggle, her missing index finger and the little silver flask she carried inside her purse, it's always her flower patch I see when memory brings her to mind.
I am grateful I didn't inherit her penchant for "taking a nip," and I'm okay with my more serious nature, but oh how I wish, wish, wish she'd passed her green thumb down to me.
A while ago bunny tucked his wiggly nose through a slat in the fence to chomp my neighbor's vagrant clematis vine. For a moment I considered letting him -- their sunny, lush backyard unearths envy in me I didn't know was possible -- but, I shooed him away.
He's been behaving for quite awhile now, probably reminded by my scolding that he's lucky, indeed, to be loose from his wire condo.
Still, somewhere inside me, I hear a little giggle, tempting me to get up and coax bunny back to the fence.
I know I shouldn't ...
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Waiter or Writer?
Today I'm waiting for these folks to call me back so I can interview them for one of the columns I write for the monthly HBA newspaper.
You would think that while I sit at my desk waiting for each of them to call me back, I could also work on my novel, or something a little more productive than a blog post.
Especially in light of something Shannon Woodward said at this weekend conference I just attended. (Okay, she said a lot of things, but this is easy to remember, and one of her comments that stuck with me ...)
"If you are waiting for inspiration, you are a waiter, not a writer."
I think these weren't her words, originally, but frankly, I've enough distractions pulling at me today that if I get up and find my notes from the conference where I heard her speak, who knows if I'll finish even this brief post.
I fear that if I start "my own thing," my outstanding calls will all return, leaving me to finish the day with that exasperated, interrupted feeling writers so loathe. So, I sit here, grazing blogs istead.
Yet, if I've learned anything about the discipline of writing it is, in addition to Shannon's lesson, that I not wait for those elusive luxurious stretches of protected time to engage in my craft, but that I also fit it into the pieces and snips and sometimes unplanned moments where I find myself, like now, waiting for something else.
I wonder, did Hemingway scrub toilets, pay bills, cook dinner, run errands? Surely not. But, he undoubtedly must have faced and persisted through interruptions of the day -- even those of his own making.
You would think that while I sit at my desk waiting for each of them to call me back, I could also work on my novel, or something a little more productive than a blog post.
Especially in light of something Shannon Woodward said at this weekend conference I just attended. (Okay, she said a lot of things, but this is easy to remember, and one of her comments that stuck with me ...)
"If you are waiting for inspiration, you are a waiter, not a writer."
I think these weren't her words, originally, but frankly, I've enough distractions pulling at me today that if I get up and find my notes from the conference where I heard her speak, who knows if I'll finish even this brief post.
I fear that if I start "my own thing," my outstanding calls will all return, leaving me to finish the day with that exasperated, interrupted feeling writers so loathe. So, I sit here, grazing blogs istead.
Yet, if I've learned anything about the discipline of writing it is, in addition to Shannon's lesson, that I not wait for those elusive luxurious stretches of protected time to engage in my craft, but that I also fit it into the pieces and snips and sometimes unplanned moments where I find myself, like now, waiting for something else.
I wonder, did Hemingway scrub toilets, pay bills, cook dinner, run errands? Surely not. But, he undoubtedly must have faced and persisted through interruptions of the day -- even those of his own making.
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