August was wonderful. Here in Edinburgh, we have multiple festivals taking place concurrently and the entire city is alive with people from all around the world. I spent the month going to shows and seeing friends, meeting new people, catching up with folks I'd not seen since 2019. There were gatherings and then days away from the buzz on beaches and in hills. Moreover, I had a bouquet of writer events - my own at the wonderful Edinburgh International Book Festival, an appearance at the Edinburgh Literary Salon, and attending writing related events. Then as the month ended, my children went back to school, work picked up, and we settled back into the rhythm of life.
Part of that rhythm is making time to write. It has always been a part of my day to day, I feel off balance when I don't write. However, I have not been making time for it over the summer. It has been squeezed into the cracks in the day. My best analogy is that it is like running. In the summer, my writing is akin to a light trot-walk, chatting as I go, without a regular timeslot to train. Getting my next novel planned is the equivalent of getting organised and signing up for a marathon, and in September, I have been getting ready for the full training schedule. My writing this month has been about getting back into the rhythm of making time, good clear time to sit and do so. Organising my day so that I can have some creative thinking time. I am not really a runner. I have on occasion pulled on my trainers and gone for a jog. I am a writer and I know that like anything, if you want to do it well, you have to invest the time to learn and practice your craft.
The autumn is here, bringing in the nights, days for sitting warm. For me, it brings the perfect opportunity to do what is best for writers: read read read and write write write. I have started novel 2 and, as ever, I have poems at varying stages but when I can't quite find the inspiration, I have found my photo reel a good thing to look at. I take far too many pics, clearly something caught my eye on that day. This morning, this photo from a Fife coastal walk a few weeks ago got my imagination fired back up again.
What works for you?
