Sunday, June 14, 2009

Catching Your Breath

Ernest Shepard--Enchanted Place

The other day, my college roommate sent me an email.  She was going to the beach house on Sullivan’s Island, SC (near Charleston)—did I want to come?

Of course, I had no business going at all.  My broken laptop put me  behind on my WIP.  I need to connect my daughter with my parents this afternoon for a week at their house and I needed to do her laundry and pack her suitcases.   I’ve got stuff to do in the house and yard and … “YES!” I said.  “I’m coming!”

So I left my kids at home with my husband yesterday morning at 6:00 A.M. and drove the few hours there.  We had a wonderful day at the beach, wearing floppy straw hats, cackling over old jokes, and getting four and a half straight hours of sun (if my dermatologist is reading this---yes, I did have sunscreen. But no, I didn’t keep from getting burned somehow.)  We stayed up late and ate take-out and had a great time.

So…obviously I didn’t get any work done yesterday on my writing.  But the funny thing is that I woke up this morning and had all these fantastic ideas. And driving home this morning, the ideas kept flowing.

Maybe sometimes we need a little break from the ordinary to get our brains revved up again.  It must have been the stimulation of something different that generated my brainstorming (it sure wasn’t the junky food I ate or the wine I drank, or the late hour I stayed up until.)  I think sometimes it’s good to get out of our ruts, see different people, and get those rusty gears in our heads churning again.