AWOL - IWSG November 2025

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 our ninja leader Alex Cavanaugh. Thank you to November  cohosts, Jennifer Lane, Jenni Enzor, Renee Scattergood, Rebecca Douglass, Lynn Bradshaw, and Melissa Maygrove. For links to all contributors, click here.

November’s optional question - When you began writing, what did you imagine your life as a writer would be like? Were you right, or has this experience presented you with some surprises along the way?

I knew I’d be away and unavailable when the email announcing this month’s IWSG post arrived. I pre-wrote my post, unaware of the optional question. Happily, I came close enough!

Sixteen years ago when I created Middle Passages, I was besotted. Every word I wrote felt as rewarding as that electrifying, innocent joy of first love. But as we all know, dazzling first loves don’t always remain for the long haul. It’s like that with writing too. Many submissions and rejections followed those initial earnest blog posts, which taught me that real writing takes hard work, patience and time. I get it, but I’d be a liar to say I don’t miss that period when everything was fresh and exhilarating.

These days, writing feels more like living with a trusted partner. We know we belong together and have enough confidence in our relationship that sometimes we do things apart.

Occasionally though we experience a lapse in communication, which happened this past April when my writing brain forgot to tell me it planned to take off to parts unknown the same day I retired. I trust it to return, but patience is key. While it's been away, I've been reading, walking a couple of miles a day, taking yoga and Zumba classes and learning Mahjong. I want to tell you my days are full, but they aren't, really. I have plenty of time to write, but zero inspiration. So, to keep myself going, I’ve been playing around with my old blog posts, cutting and pasting them into a Word document, then editing the heck out of them. 

You know how when you love your own words, your proofreading eyes fail to find mistakes? Now I see them all. Mostly though, I find ways to tighten the essays to make them more compelling. It's fun. Re-reading the early-writing me feels like visiting with an old friend I haven’t seen in years. It's a little like receiving postcards from afar. It helps me stay in touch with my imagination while it's off galivanting.

What do you do when inspiration takes a holiday?

Replenishing the Well

First off, a huge thank you to all who commented on my IWSG post last week.  So many thoughtful responses, so much support—I can’t begin to share how much you helped.  And there, in the midst of all that encouragement, Misha Gericke said “... Usually the radio silence from your muse means it's time to refill those creative wells of yours. So do some other stuff you never get time for.”  Right.  Why didn’t I think of that?  Because more hours at work, along with life circumstances, have conspired to eliminate much of the time I had up until a year ago, so I haven’t been out doing what I usually do to court inspiration.

Duly reminded by Misha, I strapped on my hiking shoes late Friday afternoon, grabbed the Nikon and took a quick walk through a reservation a few towns over.  The place isn’t new to me. I’ve included photos from it on Middle Passages before.  But I don’t get there often and it’s just fresh enough for me that my eyes open wide whenever I go.  

This time I arrived in the late afternoon, too early for optimum sunset light, but in good time to enter the woods to the squeal and chatter of birds…different from the ones occupying my backyard.  Mostly, I’ve walked this place in the fall, so I've never seen the rhododendrons blooming pink along the paths, although they are what I’d expect in early June. Their white-blossomed cousins flowering amidst the deep woods however, were a surprise. Our long winter left its mark on the place, upended trees leaning against others, their root systems creating walls of earth that towered over me, sawdust and stacked logs evidence of  recently cleared paths. Emerging into the sun, I made my way to a refurbished boathouse, and breathed deep, watching the lazy river track back to an invisible ocean a few miles away, before heading back through the brush.  

We’d had a big rain the day before, and a brook running through the deep woods kept up a running commentary that accompanied my footsteps.  I’m not sure I knew that tributary was there before, but its chatter led me to a lone picnic table in a shady glen below the path, green with moss and damp, where vines of poison ivy colored tall tree trunks. The stream rippled and surged through miniature waterfalls as it rushed over stepping stones, and I paused.  It’s a place one might encounter a flicker of movement and imagine the  presence of a nymph or a water sprite, a leprechaun or a gnome.  

The light was kind of flat, the pictures only so-so.  But when I climbed back into my car, I understood what’s been missing in my life. Variety.  Novelty.  Difference.  

 

Perhaps you read my relief in this post. All it took was one walk to feel my mind revving up. I'm thinking the dead battery in there only needs a jump-start, instead of a total replacement.