Stories for Humans

On writing with one foot in another world.

I’ve been walking in a valley of no writing. If writing created trees of ink and paper that sprung up beside the trail to beautify the landscape, line the creeks and rivers of thought with leafy boughs, and provide green shade and a softness for the eye, then I am trotting instead down a brown trail through a blackened landscape. It is silent; there are no birds.

I thought of the bird-sound when driving through the burnt hills of Jasper National Park recently. As the passenger window slid down and the wind blew in, there was markedly no rustling of leaves or chirping of birds, just the quiet stillness of the remnants of trees, standing like sad sentinels of black and tan, row upon row for miles and miles.

No, my mind hasn’t been through a tragic, widespread flagration, but perhaps stress has scorched its paths and stifled the vibrant flow of thoughts and dreams. I need time and a calmness of the mind in order to write.

Or do I? Maybe I’ve been too easy on myself of late, in this burnout recovery mode, seeking out cool, leafy arbours and lovely, flowered fields before I bring out paper and pencil from the imaginary satchel at my waist.

Maybe I can write with no peaceful hour ahead, without an atmosphere of growing things and humming inspiration. Could I write on the run? In fits and starts or under the gun of dinner needing to be begun or imminent appointments or a schedule impatiently pacing outside the office door? With someone calling my phone which is somewhere in another room, with other people’s expectations carelessly strewn about the floor?

Perhaps it’s possible. I’m about to find out.

With summer school and kid’s plans and piled up outdoor gardening and looming tasks marching – marching through the halls, I wonder if I can disappear inside my mind and write, still. I shall have to.

Because this Not Writing Season has brown, faded leaves swirling at my feet and I can’t ignore them anymore. They whisper, “we’re going, we’re going, and you must come too”. Over the hill and through the woods and into the storybook cabin, past the rushing waterfalls that tumble with ideas, through a fairy world of tiny lights and coloured vines, opening to a vista of distant, thoughtful mountains unexplored and beckoning. Before I forget what that Other World looks like, or who I was there, like Susan Pevensie after coming home from Narnia.

I will roll up a little pool from The Wood Between the Worlds and keep it in my pocket, and throw it down here and there when whimsy hits whilst I’m trudging through an ordinary life. I will gather courage, jump in, and write.