Springing Out Again

Hey! The daffies are out and the sun is shining. It’s even warm. I had to take my coat off on my walk this afternoon. Everything brimmed with the hope of new life.

The mighty Oregon Oak stands tall against the blue sky, its many clusters of mistletoe clear to see on the branches still bare of leaves.

One of my favorite trees, it’s just up the hill from my house. I pass it often on my daily walks when I do the uphill first.

Grass seems brighter. Sure does feel like spring. Of course nothing is certain about western Oregon weather in late February or even March. Yesterday the wind was hurling rain against my windows. But I’ll happily cling to whatever snippets of spring we get.

I walked on up the hill, feeling good. This morning I finished a long book project–reading through the entire series I had revised, making sure everything flowed together.

I paused to look up into the tree’s branches overhead, tangled as the stories, but every gnarled limb knew its place and carried the tree’s essence to the buds that would one day open and breathe out life. I had felt each of my stories, as if those glimpses into history breathed with life too.

The Silence of Progress

When we’re called to shelter the walls may feel tight. Yet I’m grateful to be able to shelter on our farm. Walks on the mountain have brought daily joy. Spring has come and gone. Summer’s here. The lavender’s in bloom.

I’m also grateful my work is here, and I can immerse myself in that. I’m working on the series, two trilogies, one centered in ancient Minoan Crete, the other in ancient Ireland. They’re complete now. But before my agent sent Book One to a new publishing house recently she suggested I review it.

Review it.

Two simple words. But it meant going through the whole thing. So in silence I entered that world once again–and found places to heighten the tension, smooth the flow. After she sent that off it occurred to me that if I found places to improve in Book One, maybe I’d better review Book Two–which led to reviewing Book Four, one I had recently revised dramatically. And once I read that I thought I’d better make sure the required changes in the opening of Book Five still worked. I got caught up in that story and didn’t really know where to stop, so I read it all. Book Six is a bit long and I think I should see if I could trim it a little–which will require a full read. But I got to thinking about Book Three, which I had skipped because it has always read so well, thanks to my muse who breathed so much of that story into my ear. What if I could make it just a bit better? I reviewed it. No big changes but worth the read.

Because I have been so deep into this, I haven’t been on social media much. It’s in the silence that I make progress.

COMMENT