For various reasons (health, chronic pain, an aging pet, volunteer commitments, and the Pacific Northwest weather), I’ve spent the winter pretty much chained to my desk. Whenever I had a spare moment I tried to force myself to sit down and write—right now! As you can probably guess, I was supremely unproductive. And frustrated.
You know how if you keep doing what you’ve been doing you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting? Well, today I decided to try something different. I shrunk my manuscript (with the gaping hole in the middle) and my research notes so that they’d fit on one page each, I grabbed a pencil, and I went for a walk.
Wouldn’t you know it, my creativity was hiding in the woods! I found her right about here:
Once I found her, the manuscript practically wrote itself. And I got to walk (hooray, exercise!) in the sunshine.
We even stopped to make a few new friends on the way home… Piglets! A sheep, one day before shearing. Goats!
Kimberly Baker, superfriend and member of the dynamic trio, has challenged me to a war of words. She knows I need a swift kick in the *** to get a first draft down (especially of a fiction novel–gasp!), but she may not know just how competitive I can be. Even if I lose, though, I win, since it’s just the incentive I need to make some good progress before our amazing fall Weekend on the Water retreat in November.
As part of the deal, we’re offering ourselves up for public humiliation… um, I mean, accountability. If you want to cheer us on (or scoff at me for my pathetic attempts), you can follow our progress here.
