Last weekend, the temperature outside rose by 10 degrees, then almost 20. The sun hit the ground full force, shrinking ice and stretching puddles and filling the air with the start of a new season.
Like any good Wisconsinite on the first sunny, decent day, I got the car washed. I dragged the shop-vac out of the basement and sucked up all kinds of after-school snack crumbs from the back seat. I scrubbed the interior doors and center console to rid them of salt marks left behind by snow boots. I gave myself a workout sloughing off remnants from the last few months.
Then, I breathed a big sigh of relief and thought I just might make it.
The last several weeks have been hard. Not because I’ve been buried in mounds of snow like friends out east. Not even because I’ve had to shovel winter’s bounty more than once (though the last time I did felt like doing penance with its wet and heavy load). I hit a relative low in January, perhaps seasonal or cyclical or who-knows-what-sical, and it’s been tough pushing through to the other side.
But it’s shifted–like the temperature lifted–in a positive direction, and the newness in the air is a welcomed reprieve.
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So it is with writing, too.
My schedule at work has changed such that, even though I’m in the office more, I’m finding more energy outside of work to pay attention to my novel, taking one afternoon a week to do nothing but work on the story.
I won’t say the words are coming easier or the revising is less painful, but the manuscript is improving inch by inch. And after sitting stale for a while, a story that grows even by small degrees is like Spring at full tilt.
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Speaking of Spring and full tilt and writing, don’t forget to register for the Flash Nonfiction course I’m teaching that begins April 5th! Your house, my house, in your favorite cafe…it’s online and at your fingertips.
We all have stories. What’s yours?
There are certain stories my gut wants me to put down on paper.