Friday Fricassee

Hello, Friday!

Something amazing happened last night, and Mr. A gets the credit.

(Well, doesn't that sound all spicy?)

You know I'm on a self-imposed writing break.  You know--because I bleed my heart all over this blog--how deeply necessary this hiatus has been.

And yet, as my second week of non-writing dragged on, I wasn't filling my time with Good Things.  I was despairing.  Drowning in a dearth of creativity.  Crying too easily because I felt empty.

Seriously, Non-Writing Me!  What's with that?  I am not the high artiste type.  Not the woe-is-me-I-am-dying-internally-because-I'm-not-wordcrafting type.  Really, I'm not.  Writing does infuse me with life--but so does any creative pursuit.

Because I was created to create.  And that is where, for me, life and joy exist.

In the midst of my difficult week, the seeds of a story came to life in the dust of my dormant brain--a retelling, of all things.  (I have never been tempted to do a retelling before.  But this one...oh, this one!)  And last night, accompanied by a glass of Chardonnay and soft guitar music, I sat with my husband and brainstormed.

It was tremendous.

For whatever reason, Mr. A has captured the vision of this story with me.  (Oh, yes.  He was created to create, too.  It's one of our strongest bonds.)  And when I skipped ballet in order to spend creative time with him, he was happy to oblige.  In fact, he'd already offered more than once to sit down with me and play around with this story idea.

How can a gal say no to that?

So it was fairly magical, tossing around characters and plot ideas and setting and romance and all the good things with the love of my life.  And this morning, I am fresh and alive again.

Here's the thing--I'm still on hiatus.  In order for this to truly work, it needs to feel like child's play for a while.  I need to dabble...to imagine...to sift my fingers through the sand without building a castle.  Yet.

I'll know when I'm ready to write this thing.  Right now, it's refreshing and restoring me.  I'm not going to push myself to start that beat sheet.  But I am going to immerse myself in the joy of finding this story's heart.  And this is new ground for me--I'm not a lover of the planning stage.  I need productivity--word count--a completed manuscript that I can rip into and revise.

But that's not what my spirit needs right now.  And thanks to Mr. A, I've discovered exactly what I do need.

I need this story to dance in my head and take shape in its own time.  I need to allow myself to live in the seven-year-old-me realm, where stories float to the surface and I stir them with my fingertip, watching them grow.  No pressure.  No deadline.  No ROI or marketing plan.

Just pure creativity.  Pure story.

Pure bliss.

Thank you, Mr. A, for helping me find my lost self.

And thank you, dear readers, for taking this journey with me.

May your creative spirits find equal refreshment!  I'll see you next week.