I love looking out the window while I think and plot and brainstorm on my WIP. Today I can see robins, a lot of them, which makes my heart happy since it's a sure sign of spring. I grin at the cheerfully yellow forsythia and the daffodils bobbing in the light breeze. And I can't forget the relentless sound of wood chippers and chain saws clearing out stuff that Mother Nature knocked down over the winter.
But back to the robins. . .
I don't know why they do their little "robin tango" which consists of three or four fast steps and then a pause. It seems as if they're checking to see if someone is following them, but they don't turn around and yell "Aha!". So maybe they're listening. And then they run a few more steps and stop again.
It feels like the writing process. Come on! You knew I was going to tie it to writing. In fact, I was thinking the other day how everything I experience can be turned into a blog post about writing. Which is remarkably convenient, since I was also wondering how to make my blog interesting (if it is) to both readers and writers.
Without meaning to, I process everything that I see or do or experience into writing. I may not write down everything that happens, and not everything that I see or do or experience ends up in a story. But it does shape how I interact with the world, and how I want to describe my daily existence.
So in future posts you may see things that aren't strictly writing-related. Only they are. But in a different fashion than before my books were available to readers.
Which is where the robins come in.
It's always a good idea to take a few running steps, and then stop and listen and see if anything is different than when you started your journey. Maybe you need to zig a little to the left for the next trio of steps. Or maybe you'll have to zag to the right when you find yourself veering a little further away from your destination.
It's also possible that you have to just say, "I'm done with running. I'm going to fly."
That works, too.
