Early fall is also a brief vacation for me, lifting me from the distractions of everyday life, and my mind is left to its ponderings and brings up its own wisdom. For the past year I’ve been feeling called. Craving a sabbatical, but I didn’t carve out time. I have little free time because I give my time away. And I am focused, aware my reserves are not limitless, and where I put my time matters. I feel my grandkids youth slipping between my fingers like water. It won’t be long before they are grown, off on their own, then free time will return to me.
Still, somehow the sabbatical came to me. I found myself with an opportunity to be alone for a week. Blessed solitude. Instead of writing and reading, or trying to get anything done, I stayed still, listening within. I have come into a sphere of self-reflection, absolution, resurrection, a knowing-feeling that I have completed some life cycles. Circles are closing, and endings are making way for new beginnings. Questing, intuition guiding me.
As far as my writing goes, on the surface it might look like I’m not writing. I don’t have any new work to share with my Friday morning writers group. The rough draft of my new memoir is in ragged pieces, like the bits of broken seashells that wash up on the sand. As of this moment it’s not yet a manuscript. My pages are like those seashell pieces not yet formed into a mosaic.
Truth to tell, it only appears that I’m not writing. Fact is, I’m doing my pre-writing. Wandering in my mind, in my dreaming mode. I’m an open channel, connecting with the feeling space that wakes up the story inside me. I always know when it begins to happen. I feel a shift when I touch base with my writing, a current pulling me out to sea.
