Chasing Summer

It’s November 2 and it’s chilly and breezy here at the lake—like wintertime chilly. The sun is shining today, but on Halloween–just two days ago–it snowed! Snow on Halloween! Sheesh! We just walked down to the dock to take a look at the lake, and the wind nipped at my nose so bad, I had to wrap my scarf around my face. Now, as I sit by the window, working and watching the wind scatter our tidy piles of raked leaves back across the yard, I’m wondering what the hell happened to summer?

I know summer was here—after all the cottage is still open (although we’re closing up next weekend). I vaguely remember a boat ride or two, several swims in a lake that never really warmed up, and a lot of plans for getting Book 3 of the Women of Willow Bay series finished and out into the world. Instead, Husband retired and became a full-time companion at home, I traveled most of June, shivered through an unseasonably chilly July, and struggled with family stuff, the death of a dear friend, and sick sisters in August and September. And I have no idea where October got to—I mean, wasn’t it just August a couple of weeks ago? The kids were here and we were teaching Grandboy to swim in the lake, right? Look! See? We just took this picture!

Clichéd as it might be to say this, it seems the older I get, the faster time goes by and suddenly, I’m losing an entire season instead of enjoying long lazy days floating on the bay in the sun or… writing…

Now, trying to get revisions done on Book 3, I’m worrying that I let a colder-than-usual summer that was full of changes be my excuse for not getting the writing done when I should’ve gotten it done. I truly want an excuse. If I can say, “oh, the summer just flew by and it never really felt like summer, so I just didn’t get to the book,” then I don’t have to confess that I’m simply a procrastinator. That the book wasn’t coming together like I wanted it to, so I let everything else in my life take priority instead of buckling down and just writing the damn thing.

Yeah, I know it’s been a tough summer for me, for my family, for my dear friends. You might even say its been one helluva summer. Changes, both tragic and joyful, have been coming at us so fast, I feel like time’s zipping by in one of those flippy calendar timelines they used to use in the movies to show the passage of months and years. But if I am the writer that I claim to be, that I want to be, shouldn’t I be able to write, no matter what? Shouldn’t the desire, the discipline, the need to write be inside me always and not just on days where I have the time to sit down at the computer or when the muse smacks me upside the head? I’m seriously asking here because getting back into this book has been difficult, even arduous.

Anyone else out there use the lack of a decent summer as an excuse for not doing… well, whatever? Surely, I’m not the only who’s feeling the loss of the summer that never really was, am I?