As I searched my mind (and my phone’s camera roll) for an interesting story to tell you about “island life” from these past few weeks…I came up kind of empty.
And that is because these last few weeks have been almost entirely about staying in.
I had not one but two book deadlines, and four article prompts for a contest I’d decided to enter, not to mention the usual amount (at least) of freelance work, and, well, I basically hardly went outside.
I am delighted to report to you, though, that I handed off one of the books to its editor last week (although even now I can hear him in the next room, type-type-typing changes and corrections that will have to be made), and that I have just this afternoon sent off the second book to its editor. Whew!
(Why yes, yes I am sipping a little single-malt scotch in celebration of these astonishing achievements.)
It’s actually pretty fantastic that this is happening. As I wrote in one of those four articles I mentioned, I’d been in kind of a creative drought for a while now. This happens; it’s not usually a big deal, unless you have um deadlines. Commitments you’ve made to other people. Other people with businesses that have production schedules and all that…
But other than that, my experience has been over the years that the creative force waxes and wanes. Sometimes the well runs dry; sometimes it gushes, overflows. It’s just part of the cycle. The dry spells are nothing to worry about. The urge to write always comes back.
(That doesn’t make it less scary, to be in a drought.)
This particular drought had been kind of lengthy, though. I’m not confused about why–pandemic, grief, loss, anxiety, uncertainty, you name it–so I was being gentle with myself…but the longer it went on, the more worried I got.
So I was really happy not just to have had a fire lit under my butt courtesy of these marvelous deadlines, but that it worked.
It’s not that I didn’t take any wildlife pictures. I just took them through windows.
Or standing on the front porch, in the case of the Very Not Frightened Of Us Fawn. 
This fellow is totally my pet. 
Great blue heron!
And I did manage one long walk where I saw a pileated woodpecker at work–but they are shy creatures, and every time I pulled my camera out, the beastie hopped around to the far side of the tree he was working on.
Trust me, he was cool, though. 🙂
So I’m sorry I don’t have an amusing story this week, but I’m thrilled that soon–or at least soonish–I will have a couple new books to tell you about.
Meanwhile, if you want to read the articles, the first one was about space (and it’s a reworking and expanding of a previous blog post–so meta!); the second was about death (though it was actually more about loss); the one I referenced above was about re-entry; and the final one was about work.
So that’s what I’ve been up to: mostly just staying in and writing.
It could be worse.
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