October Hearth

I am home from my travels, safe and sound and grounded, and grateful for both the survival and for homecoming. I may have sadly ambivalent feelings about my house, the Winchester Mystery House North, with it's various mostly-finished remodel and home-improvement projects a reminder that things never seem to get completed, but I am grateful to be back there nonetheless, with my family and some semblance of a routine.

More importantly, as truly wonderful as the four trips (10 plane flights!) I've taken since June have been, I'm grateful for the ability to focus once again on my writing - both the poetry and the prose.

My current goals are to make notes toward a new poem daily, to work on revising poems weekly, and to focus on the re-write of the novel at least five days out of seven.

I recently overheard someone (perhaps on Fresh Air?) talking about creating a "cocoon of creativity" - a time and a place that is sacred, or at the very least devoted to one's work and protected from the distractions and intrusions of every-day demands. The space is important - a room of one's own - and I have that. I have my own office, with a computer and walls lined with books, and a place under a cantilevered desk where the dog likes to stretch out and sleep. The office has a door, and a window with a view into our unfinished cement courtyard and its reflecting pool, water plants, rock.

What's lacking, still, is my scheduling of a time in which to create. Here are the options I must chose from: before 5am on mornings when I work early, or after 9pm on days when I work late and D. can home to supervise S's homework. Neither is ideal, my desire to be a writer has joined forces with my impatience with my own whining and excuse-making. Besides, this post (which I started weeks ago) is a prime example of making due between the cracks of Life. I can write while S. is in rehearsal for one of the two orchestras in which she plays. I can write in bed (and have begun to do so almost every night). I can write after working out at the gym. And on those mornings when I don't work early.

Here's the street where the heroine of my novel lives in Aberystwyth, by the way. It's one of the spots I scouted out while there, and I found it after I had nearly given up on discovering the row of stucco houses closer to downtown that I'd imagined. But this works, I believe. Not a place she'd want to live forever, but good enough as a room to rent while she gets her feet under her.