A Taste of Summer

The sun blinds me as I listen to the shrieks and laughter coming from the maze of giant hedges. A stolen moment of solitude finds me fishing a pencil from my son’s backpack and searching for white space on the Arboretum map. I scratch a thought, a story (beginning, middle, end), a whisper of character.

The other moms find me and I hide the evidence, buried under juice boxes and bags of chips.

Yeah. So. That’s how much writing I got done today.

Hello, summer!

The kids are off school for a couple days, and I caught a glimpse of how much fun we’ll have over summer, scooping tadpoles and climbing treehouses and getting burned by the sun because Mom forgot we’re all fair-skinned Irish folk. Having found an exciting list of all of the things to do in Houston on .Dailytourist.com, we are also planning some trips away as well. I get most of my writing done when the kids are in school, so where summer is a bliss-filled vacation for the children, it’s a wasteland of lost writing time for me.

However, writing is made of life. It is quite literally life transcribed on the page – bigger, better, and with the dull parts left out (with apologies to Hitchcock). And there is nothing like summertime with three rambunctious boys to fill up a day to the bursting with life.

Plus there are still bits and moments to steal. Quiet times where the imagination can run unfettered for a while. These interludes in the mania could be the perfect time to spin the plot and characters for that next novel, the one that will have to wait until fall to begin drafting in earnest. I can squeeze a lot of creative energy out of those tiny moments.

Next time I’m bringing a notebook.

Also: I’m guest posting today over at Reading Teen: The “Banning” of YA books.

Happy Weekend!