the value of community

I am an author.

I am an author, a writer who has not written for a month.

There is a blank page.  It is patient. It never beckons or berates.  It waits for words.

I circle and touch and retreat and forget and remember and circle again.

It waits ... I rationalize.

I got a job.  A great job.  A job that makes me smile as I drive the 40 miles one way each day to get there.  A job that is only part-time (supposedly) and should give me plenty of time to write.

I've been busy with other things also.  My grandson thought it was a great idea to have a cookout one Sunday after church.  This idea became a weekend ritual for the grandchildren ... swimming in the pool and pouring themselves out of the water to feast on hotdogs, fresh cucumbers and cantelope from the garden, and cupcakes. 

These things take time. 

Time from writing.

I don't think busyness is the culprit here.  I think instead the difference may be that my writing group has not met in a month.  Not since our author reading in fact, and I miss them. 

I miss thinking about writing after hearing interesting, curious events described in their stories each week.  I miss the sense of having a deadline to finish a story.  Not that anyone in my writing group cares if I miss a deadline, but because they so appreciate what I bring to our reading table and encourage me to bring more.  I miss the conversation before and after our meetings, and I miss thinking about what each of them might bring next to educate, entertain and inspire.  Will it be an adventurous sailing story?  Or an unexpected epiphany teased from the memory of one's past?  Or simple entertainment in the telling of interactions with plants, animals, and human beings in yards, homes, parking lots, road trips, nail salons and myriad other settings? 

Thankfully, my writing community is reuniting again this week.

Shhh ... it feels a bit like a secret we shouldn't tell, but we are gathering again this week to receive copies of the first printing of our new book, Scenes from the Rear View Mirror.

We are authors, and we have written a book, the first of many we will publish either in partnership with one another or individually as we continue to follow our writing dreams.

I look forward to seeing the completed book, but most of all I look forward to seeing these women who by chance became my writing partners.  For this community, I am beyond grateful.