Quiet

It's a quiet day of catching up on work--lots of it--and preparing the new Magpie's Pen blog for its debut on Friday.  I am sure I won't have all the kinks worked out yet, but I know you'll understand that like any labor of love, it is a work in progress.  Mostly I am just happy to be creating a space for writing exercises, resources, and for thinking about sentences and books and the people who craft them..

In the meantime, there are other writing projects to finish up, submissions to send out, and other people's texts to edit.  So many words, so little time!  Some days my life feels like giant stacks of papers and books, teetering on the edge of some great old, dusty desk, ready to come tumbling down if someone sneezes.  It's not a bad life, but a precarious one, and then there are always the pencils to sharpen, the cups of tea to brew, and the t's to cross with a flourish.  

A writer's life is extremes of great activity followed by long periods of stillness.  We need to live in order to have something to write about, but we also must love solitude and hours of quiet.  Maybe "love" isn't the right word.  "Need" is probably better.  I know I have friends who are reading this right now and nodding their heads.  That's why I love you.  Well, one of the many reasons why I do.

Tonight I'll make some great potato stew, the inspiration for which I found here, and Mr. Magpie and I will watch a movie in the living room to take a short break from all these words.  And yet, we won't escape them entirely, for there are the shelves and shelves of books around us and the small portrait hanging quietly on the wall of that great and wild poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.  No matter what we do, he's there, reminding us every night of our purpose and our passion.  Reminding us that to be heard we must spend hours keeping ever so still, keeping ever so quiet.