Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Delayed

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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