Spring and Focus

Hellooooo, Spring!

Come on in.

You are always welcome here.

I'm always intrigued by how a writer chooses to begin a story,

especially with what focus:

will it be far out, giving the lay of the land,

as in movies 

when the camera begins high up 

and gradually moves in closer

and closer 

and closer

until it focuses on

the main character?

Or will it begin close up

immediately putting the focus on

a central person

or image 

and later moving out

to give us the lay of the land?

In paintings and photographs, too,

I like to think about

the artist's choices:

where is he/she directing our focus

and why?

It is spring in North Carolina,

a good time

to think about

beginnings.

Northern Spring

After witnessing a full-blown spring down south (North Carolina), we've returned to western New York state where spring is just beginning.  Hungry for green and for flowers, I gathered up a few plants at the local farm market: geraniums (above) and lettuce (below):

No plot is ready for these wee plants, but they were calling my name.

Bushes and trees are just beginning to bud:

You can see the pale greens from a distance:

And you can spot my husband's sense of humor:

Writing? Right.  I'll resume soon. Have to dig in some dirt first  . . . Are you a digger?

More Spring

When spring springs, it surely springs--boing! Was all that bounty really hiding beneath the brown and gray and snow all these months? What a show.

Does it make you want to clean the windows? The house? The nest? Stay outside all day?  It makes me want to do all those things, but the new story is also springing to life. Let me out! it demands. Listen to me! Okay, okay, okay.

While the bushes and trees sprout hundreds of leaves and blossoms each day, I'm only sprouting five pages a day. That's a good pace for me, though.  I used to be able to do twenty pages a day, but stories emerge more slowly and carefully now, and they are more fully formed when they do emerge.

And after I write, I'm outside. Are you?

A North Carolina Day

It's one of those North Carolina blue sky spring days and the wind is blowing and the birds are winging and singing and the pollen is making it all a fuzzy sort of day.

Those new buds on the tree opened up overnight, and that's how a new story is arriving, too: with each morning a new revelation, like something opening up in a burst. I tried to stop it–I'm not ready–wait–but it won't be stopped.

Outside, the dogs are losing their hair (and horses, too, I've learned from Lori Skoog), and even the trees seem to be shedding. Don't you love birch trees?

The tall pines are whipping their heads around, shaking pollen from their hair . . .

And me, I am outside, looking around . . .are you?

Ba-bloom!

Round nearly every turn here in NC, you come across these enchanted scenes, trees and bushes exploding in blooms, petals sailing through the air and carpeting the ground, pollen infiltrating your eyes and nose and painting every surface.

Because we are here in NC in April and then return to western New York state at the end of the month, we are able to experience two springs--ba-bloom! There is nothing quite like the surge of spring . . . except perhaps for the red and gold trees of autumn or the first quiet snowfalls of winter.

Do you have a favorite season?

Climbing Tree

I love this tree with its smooth, mottled 'skin.' When I was young I would have been up in this tree in a minute--it begs for a child to roost in it. Now it's my grandchildren and my characters who climb trees.

This one is a crape myrtle--or so we've been told. We've never been here when it blooms–we're usually up north then, where the climbing trees are the maples.

And where you are: any climbing trees?  And did you climb when you were young (or old)?

Looka, Looka

Looka, looka:  trees are budding:  spring! Always astounding. So much renewal and energy and force–especially welcome to my northern friends this year, I think. This is in NC, but soon it will creep northward . . .

And speaking of creeping and renewal: While I'm wrapping up final revisions on one book, buds for a new one are preparing to emerge. I've learned to trust this process. Yesterday, I woke with the opening to the next story, the first paragraph intact, like a flower opened overnight:

There is a larger lesson here, one not so mushy, but the words today are still stuck in the muck. Alas.