From my living room window, above
the roof of the condo building across the street, I can see the baby blue sky
dotted with clouds. The sun is shining. I step outside briefly onto my balcony
to survey the scene below as people make their way to work. The air is cool and
crisp. It feels more like spring than summer, but the cooler weather is a much
needed break from the heat and humidity we experienced earlier in the week.
This is my first summer living in
Toronto, my first time experiencing the oppressive heat and humidity. And with
the heat and humidity comes the severe thunderstorms and rainfall. Two weeks
ago, as I waited to board a flight to San Francisco, the skies were a dark
slate as the rain fell in hard, pounding sheets, the thunder rolled and
lightning lit up the sky. We were delayed by two and a half hours, and the
flight that was scheduled to leave at 18:50 finally took off at 21:25. It was
an exercise in patience.
As we approach mid-summer, that
delay two weeks ago made me think about where I am, presently, in terms of my
creativity. At the beginning of June, after finishing up the first draft of a new
novella (which is now tucked away in a drawer), I returned to an earlier
manuscript in desperate need of a rewrite. Actually, for this particular
manuscript it’s rewrite number three. The rewrite is progressing, at times slowly,
and at other times it feels like I can’t keep up with the voices calling out to me
like a torrential downpour. But each day, no matter where I am — Toronto, Cancun,
Calgary, Vancouver —
I try to show up at the page and inch the work forward. I want to finish
something.
So this is where I am at present — in the middle, or close
to the middle — of
a huge rewrite. It is also the reason why I have been, of late, quiet in terms
of my blog. I am focused on bringing this work full circle, to hit it out of
the park per se. Sometimes there are delays that keep me from the page, or at
least reduce the amount of time I can spend at the page. My job is to weather
those delays, to keep on writing, one word at a time, day by day.
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