Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing and generous Alex Cavanaugh. To find links to other monthly contributors, click here. Thank you to November co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!
The writing hasn’t been kind to me lately. Back in the day when I felt stuck, I took an artist’s date which I learned to do while completing the lessons in The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. The writer suggests taking regular time-outs from your "art" to pursue an activity that might spur creativity. For me, that usually involved going on a walk with a camera. I’d click images of scenes around the area I love so much, then go home and write about something I'd photographed. Once I wrote a vignette about a house blurred by fog and it ended up inspiring my third novel.
But because of life (and cell phones), I haven’t taken a walk
with my actual camera in a long time. When I took it out of the
cupboard recently, the last photo on the memory card
was from 2019.
A few days later, I took a ride down to the harbor with the camera in the passenger seat, just to see how it felt. In truth, it felt weird. Who uses an actual camera now, anyway? But really the issue was something bigger. I didn’t grow up near the ocean. After almost 40 years of living by the sea, I’m still in awe of my surroundings but as in every other realm of my life these days, there's something missing.
Before two years ago, my walking habit was to keep my eyes open and frame picture after picture trying to capture the essence of what made me feel so joyful. These days though, what used to feel fun is hard work. Nevertheless, as flat as I felt that afternoon at the harbor, I was there. The egrets were, too. My heart wasn't in it much, but it gave me a little peace when I got home and downloaded the pictures to find my eyes still work.
