Tea Goes With Writing Too

"...let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines are heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things." ~ Kakuzo Okakura

Isn’t this a beautiful piece of writing? I love “soughing of the pines”, but mostly I am just hearing rain race through the gutters the last few days. Rainy days make for two things: many pots of hot tea and writing. In my case, the last three days have been writing, editing, editing, print, and edit again. I wanted to try a western for an upcoming contest…a romantic western in my case.

 

 

 

I wanted to do a story of place, to capture the Old West. But the story took a turn and I ended up with a story of a cowboy and woman instead. Hum, what happened here?  Well, for one thing, I decided to enter it in a western short story contest that had a limit of 3,000 words. Wow, there went a lot of my lovely details of the land. I can always go back and rewrite it another day with another market in mind I guess.

I think of Jack Schaffer’s writing. He was one of the greatest western writers ever, and he had never traveled further west than Ohio! His book, Shane, was a small but mighty volume. Who can forget the little boy calling Shane…or Shane’s devotion to Marian? It is a simple tale but packed with morality lessons.

Already I am looking forward to tomorrow when I can put the kettle on. I am not tired of the cinnamon and orange smells wafting through the house from my favorite brew. The forecast is for clearing a day or two, then more rain by the weekend. Tea before a trip to the post office to mail manuscripts in the morning, and then I will restock my reading basket for the next rainy days…or maybe I had better stock up on paper for writing? Either way, it sounds like divine time to me!