Postcard from a Non-Summer Writer

Buddy Holly on a morning walk while camping...

Good Monday Morning, Friends.  How are you today?

I'm good, but in a odd spot.  I feel I haven't felt I have had anything blogworthy to say recently.  

Summer does that to me.  I'm easily distracted by blue sky and find myself feeling like less of a writer.  In June, I start to write less, July, I live as if I've never held a pencil in my life.  I long to be outside and hope for sunny skies.

But then as August returns and (if you love summer cover your eyes here), I can feel fall in the air and I love that.  I love seeing the blackberries ripen, feel the evenings get a little cooler.  I start to find my writerly self again.  I sweep the sand out of the house and watch the autumn sedum redden.  

By the time September comes around, I'm ready to toss my flip-flops into the shoe box and pull out my cozy boots and sweaters.

I know a lot of people who teach, write during the summer.  But I am the classic student who disappears in her work from September through May.  And I'm okay with that.  In fact, I like having a time where I focus on everything but writing.

This strange not-writing-in-the-summer used to freak me out a bit.  I'd worry that by the time September arrived, I wouldn't be able to write again. I might have forgotten how.  Now I realize we all need time to fill up and that we are always writers, even when we are collecting experiences and living life.

So I'm reading. I've returned to Terrance Hayes Lighthead and will be reviewing Dean Young's Fall Higher for Copper Canyon Press (which I'm loving!)  And just letting the world happen without my to-do list in hand.  Okay, that was kind of a fib because I have a short to-do list on my desk...

But in the Northwest, we don't get a lot of sun (even in the summer!) so we must honor the glowing orb by sitting under it and doing nothing.  It's a truth here.  We'll be locked in our homes soon enough due to rain.  And that's okay, it's one of the reasons there are so many writers here.

By the way, make sure to take one more look at that handsome golden retriever in the photo.  He'll be six this October and well, I think he's fantastic.

Happy August!