Sunday Snippet: The Chasing Summer Edition

It’s October 30 and it’s chilly and a little breezy here at the lake—crisp autumn chilly. The sun has been shining all weekend, until today. Clouds are rolling in and I think we’re due some rain. We raked leaves yesterday and hauled 10 golf-cart loads to the detritus pile up on the hill. It’s truly fall… and now 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 soon). I vaguely remember a boat ride or two, several swims in the lake, although not nearly as many as previous years, and a lot of editing work, and writing and promoting new River’s Edge stories.

But Husband was diagnosed with colon cancer in June and we spent countless hours with doctors and surgeons and oncologists (he’s all good after surgery to remove the offending portion of his colon, but we’re still doing doc visits). Most of the summer, I had a knot in my stomach over Husband as well as over book promotion and wondering do I have another book in me (I’d better have 5, actually–I just signed a new 4-book contract!). Plus, 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 fishing and swimming in the lake, right?

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…

Trying to get Book 3 in the Weaver Sisters trilogy written, I’m worrying that I’m letting a weird summer that was full of drama be my excuse for not getting writing done now. I truly want an excuse. I could say, “Oh, the summer just flew by and it never really felt like summer, so I just didn’t think about the books, but that’s not true. I thought about them all the time, even in the midst of Husband’s health crisis and the editing gigs and everything else. The Weaver Sisters–the books I thought would be a piece o’ cake to write because I have sisters after all–have turned out to be harder to write than I ever imagined.

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 scary 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?  I always maintain that writing is essential to who I am and it is, but there are days, now and again, where I want the people in my head to just sit quietly for just a little bit, while I take a deep breath and recenter.

Gratitude for this week: Husband got a good report from the oncologist; promotion for TFCW is going pretty well; the leaves have been particularly spectacular this year; my Fitbit is going to be replaced at no cost to me–yay; and I got the guest room closet in the cottage cleaned and rearranged and even managed to get rid of some things that should have been gone ages ago. 

Stay well, be kind, stay safe, get your boosters, hold on to those masks, and most of all, mes amies, stay grateful,