There's a tree near where I work that's getting a headstart on fall. Even though it's late September, around here most everything is still green. There's a tinge of yellow in a few places, and a couple of bushes near my house are starting to glow a bit orange around the edges. But mostly, we're still green.
Except for this one maple, which flourishes on a dead end street. It's red. Not a little red. Bright red. All of it. It stands out among the rest of the still verdant surroundings like the moon against the stars. It's the first thing you see, and it always makes me grin.
And, of course, the writer in me immediately wanted to turn it into a metaphor....or a murder plot.
That's where ideas really come from, y'know. The odd fact, the strangely placed object, an unanswered request. I've developed murder plots from a lost shoe, a crushed flower, an overflowing dumpster. One of the "novels of my heart" first started growing when I heard about a woman who'd given her blind son a car.
Ideas bloom from all sorts of ground. All we have to do is transplant them, nourish them, let them grow.
Which is what I need to do now. Rachel is well. I've been in a tunnel, focused so much on her that I've been in "maintenance mode" - doing what I have to do to stay on track and meet deadlines, but no more. No growth. She'll be with her sitter this weekend, so I'm hoping to rest, hike, and ... well ... catch up on all the little things that have sat dormant for the past few weeks.
Grow. :)
And if you wonder why the site of the red tree made me grin so, let me introduce you to the first paragraphs of A MURDER AMONG FRIENDS. I've just completed the author alteration stage, one step closer to that February pub date.
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Autumn looks like death, sometimes, with the bright blood-red leaves fading to burgundy and finally to rust and brown. Maggie Weston thought about such death as she stared steadfastly out the window at the swirl of leaves, despite the rumble of a male throat that sounded behind her.
“Maggie.”
Go away. Maggie crossed her arms tightly as she continued to focus on the bright colors of the fall New Hampshire landscape. The back wall of the A-frame lodge house was almost entirely glass, spreading the scene before her in a cheery panorama. The trees were brilliantly dappled in the rich sunlight, but all Maggie could see was death. Death in the trees. In her heart. On her back steps. Help us, Lord, she prayed silently. Help me.
The last couple of weeks have been . . . frozen. I try not to get too personal out here in the blog, for obvious reasons. I hope to mainly focus on writing, but sometimes thoughts about writing and editing and work simply are eclipsed by the rest of life.
Rachel has been ill, but not too much so. She was out of school most of last week and I doubt she'll go tomorrow. That, in itself, closes me off. Difficult to think about writing when your kid is struggling for breath in the next room. Harder still to edit and do a good job.
I try not to beat myself up for the work not done, but it's never easy. I take my work and my deadlines seriously, and it's a deep thread of guilt when I'm not living up to them. I also try to go to bed and sleep easily, trying not to think about the neurologist's words about Rachel, at 19, being more suseptible to what they call SUDS, or Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome. Obviously, I'd rather think about work.
As writers, we have a creative spirit that drives us to put fingers-to-keyboard or pen-to-paper. We are storytellers, as pushed to spin the tale as those who once stood around the fires weaving songs and visions of mythic heroes. This is a part of our soul we must feed.
But few of us are monks in a cell, with only our writing in front of us. We're parents, employees, coaches, spouses, volunteers. We are meant to live a fully balanced life. Such balance helps us become better at each responsibility. Better writers.
Yet sometimes life gets out of balance. Emails go unanswered; deadlines are missed. Blogs go empty; sick days are used.
The trick, I suppose, is to not let the unbalance become tunnel vision, to get so focused on one job or obstacle or fascination that everything else continues to go slack. That's sort of where I am now, fighting for balance on a wobbly board, wondering if it wouldn't, for instance, be more beneficial for me to get an hour of sun while trimming the shrubs than hanging in my office to answer one more delayed email.
I did have a friend drop by last night, and out of the blue, she asked me how I defined heroes. She'd not read my blog, and when I asked her to read the previous entries, she bluntly informed me I still hadn't answer the question.
Ha! I need friends like this. To jumpstart some part of my life that I'd let go slack. A nudge which results in a prayer of thanks. For friends. And for all the blessings I DO have.
I miss the night.
I'd forgotten how much, really, that I do. I've been a night owl all my life. Since I was a kid, when my mother struggled to get me into bed, and there would be times that I'd be up late, sitting on the floor, reading by the nightlight in the hall, alert for every sound.
Had to. If my mother got up and found me, I'd regret it. :)
I started staying up all night when I was a teen, and even now, if left to my normal rhythms, no clock, no "have to be there" requirements, I gradually shift to an after-midnight routine. My daughter is the same way, and I sometimes wonder if it's habit or genetics. It takes two or three clocks to jar me out of bed in the morning, so that I can get her on the bus at 6:45.
So the long weekend gave me a chance to take back some of the night, starting with a delicious trip downtown to see Jonell Mosser Friday night. She is an amazing blues/rock singer, and I danced my butt off. She was on the soundtrack for Hope Floats, but hasn't had a huge national release yet. She should.
Anyway...that got it started. Too wired to sleep, I finally went to bed about 3am, which pretty much ruined any ideas I had for an early morning hike this weekend. When I did get up, I dedicated myself to getting the "Melody of Love" contest entries taken care of before I did anything else...this took most of the next two days. (What was I thinking when I volunteered....But it's mostly done and I can get back to my own writing. :) )
No early morning yardwork either. But lots of night. Lots of star-staring and wine and music and reading, embracing the arts and artists who I love.
Strangely enough, my desire for the night goes a long way to explain a couple of recent obsessions....