Writing in the Heat

I find winter the writing season. Summer heat is for reading, tea drinking, dinners on the deck, friends, fast runs to Sonic, etc. I find the time each day too chopped into pieces to write much. However, to be lethargic about writing is draining too. Two great ideas began to firm up in my head this week. I took one morning for writing but produced only half a page!

But there is another step for me in writing between the idea and the actual writing. That is the scene formation in my head that interrupts other things I do in my real life. Sometimes it is hard to read a book when my own characters keep speaking lines in your head! I hear them, but there is not enough time or opportunity to stop, run to computer and hack out a page. There are times I am in a group or watching a movie with DH when the problem of whether to keep the gal riding sidesaddle or let her don canvas pants and straddle the saddle taps me on the shoulder! Or do I write the guy’s side of the story and if so, before or after the war? Right now in the middle of July, I have monkey mind, swinging from one idea to another.

Today’s mail was “writing wonderful” though. I found a nice package from Saturday Writers (www.saturdaywriters.org ).  A nice letter about winning first place in this Missouri  organization’s personal essay contest, a check, judge's comments, and info cards about Saturday Writers was thrilling to receive. Look at their lovely business cards!

If I were only a wee tad closer, I would visit this group a bit.  But now it is almost a four drive one way so I need to work closer to home. Their motto is ‘Writers Encouraging Writers’.  Since I have met a few of the members, I know they practice this motto. A big thank you to Saturday Writers for “making my day” this afternoon.

I look around this office and see three books, one writer magazine, and one journal started. There is that monkey mind again, jumping from one thing to another. I am working on reading a 600 page bio of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Mauve Binchy novel, a novel by Mary Gordon named Spending, and The Little Balkans Review. The Bonhoeffer is heavy with lots of theology that slows me down but it is interesting. This man and his concept of Easy Grace vs. True Grace fascinates me, challenges me.

I have read Mary Gordon for years but when I picked up Spending off a bargain table, I did not know what I was getting. Wow, I have never see Gordon write such steamy scenes. I had to put the book down last night before I burned my book-holding hands! The book was written in 1998 so I know it is not a response to 50 Shades of Gray. (By the way, are any of my readers admitting to reading the 50 series? As a writer, the author is dancing all the way to the bank…but…well…. I can’t comment because I have not read for myself.)

The Little Balkans Review came this week…a wonderful journal!!! The staff is all volunteer so the publishing schedule is…ah…quite erratic. But the journal has been going for over 30 years. This spring issue is devoted largely to the painter Charles Banks Wilson. Then it has an interview with one of my own relatives which was a surprise! Many other pages that I have not gotten to yet.

So when you write, do your characters interrupt your life while you are not writing?