Daily Archives: March 12, 2013

I thought I was in charge

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Writing is a passion that requires discipline and focus.  With encouragement from Sage Doyle, I have made the conscious effort to drag my body from the warm cover of my duvet two hours earlier than usual, saturate myself with coffee and develop my relationship with the characters in my book.  Ensconced in the darkened tomb of my living room, I go on a two-hour journey with people I get to know more intimately the longer we spend together.  They take me with them on their epic adventures and I am merely there to document their trials, tribulations and triumphs.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings are now dedicated to coaxing those characters from their lair in the cerebral hemisphere they call home and watching how they interact with each other.  They help me understand their quirks and allow me a brief glimpse into what makes them tick.  They seem to have complete faith in my ability to share their tales from the most genuine and descriptive perspective possible.

Monday night I decided to set the alarm and throw a Tuesday into the early morning writing mix.  I woke up early, grabbed a steaming hot cup of coffee, a liquid that is quickly becoming my life’s blood, and sat waiting for the characters to emerge from their cranial apartment.   I sipped coffee and waited.  I filled the mug again and waited.  I knocked several times on the door that shields them from other cerebral functions, and still, nothing.  I pried open the door to their locked quarters and they were gone.

Those elusive characters, seeing the calendar and realizing it was Tuesday, thought they had the day off.  Not one of them had stayed behind with the hopes of participating in a spontaneous writing session.  They sent me holograms of  photos from Disney with trite lines about wishing I were there and each one of them, even the villain, was wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

mickey ears

(image courtesy of yourwdwstore.com)

I will set my alarm tonight and wake tomorrow with the expectation that they will be here and ready to go to work.  I will only knock on that door once and if they stand me up again, I will have their pink slips ready to go.  They’ll never work in this genre again!!

Morning is broken

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As the days get warmer I have a renewed sense of faith in nature, but the person responsible for daylight savings time has a very perverse sense of humor.  I know the typical lyrics of the song are “Morning has broken”, but in my case, sitting in my living room at 6:00 am, that is not the case. Morning seems to be broken. The blackness that swallowed my house in the night still holds these four walls in its confines and my outside world is invisible.

black  (this is a photo of my front lawn taken with no flash….isn’t it beautiful?)

After several cups of coffee and much patience, that darkness gives way to the day and the world is brought to life again.  When the sun finally graces the sky in our hemisphere, its heat seems to increase in intensity each day.  The dank smell of dirt pushing its way through the melting snow permeates my nose and the morning darkness no longer holds the same power it once had.  Light breathes life into the day and the earth stretches and yawns.

Soon the mornings will become brighter and rising to greet the day will require much less effort.  The days will become longer and the seasonal creatures will poke their heads from hibernation to inhabit the freshly revealed landscapes.  Blades of grass will breathe deeply after being suffocated under the weight of the snow, flowers will bloom and allergens will perform their invisible dance .

Within the morning darkness, the promise of spring awaits.