Going to Seed

I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel odd not to be writing ( surely too many double negatives there?Ed). We'll soon beon the move, having sold our house, and will shortly find ourselves in what estate agents refer to with unaccustomed delicacy as temporary accommodation. I wonder if My Summer in a Suitcase would make a good blog?

With rare serendipity, I have recently finished the second draft of my novel and am awash with constructive criticism from my agent and a few trusted friends. And I'm not going to do anything about it.  Not yet. I'm switching into removal mode. I'm going to chuck out the detritus accumulated over eleven years - catharsis - and then affectionately pack up the remainder, laying to rest this period in our lives. I'm going to spend a couple of months wandering, opening up some new doors...

...and turning my back on a few others.

In short, I'm going to let myself lie fallow.  As someone who likes to have her head filled with phrases and dreams and ideas and plans and schemes through every waking minute, it's a scary prospect.  But  I suspect that you give to your imagination a good spring clean, just as you would a cluttered attic, in order to create space for new thoughts to take seed.

However,  I know that anytime I care to look, I will find my novel just beneath the surface of my thinking, like reeds in slow water shifting as the current changes, catching the light and then winnowing away. 

I suspect the characters will be getting on with their lives without me and we'll have lots to say to one another when we meet up later. Perhaps I'm naive to imagine that I will be able to give up my novel for the summer --  will my novel be able to give up me?

The moral of all this whimsy is that just like the land, perhaps a writer needs to be unproductive for a season or two, to have a period of reflection and renewal, in order to burst back with new growth and greater vigour.

I'll still be blogging though...