Work has been running away with me.
This summer it’s been difficult to get anything done. I intentionally scaled back a little, said I was going to spend most of the summer working on research, which has been fun (and addictive…I don’t know if I’ll ever be done with research).
I’ve been researching pirates, madhouses, carnival architecture, the Industrial Revolution, science, legends and myths, everything about the 1930s, P.T. Barnum, witches, and the expeditions of Captain Cook. These may seem like they have nothing at all to do with each other, but that’s the best kind of research a writer can do. The greatest stories come from the intersection between seemingly unconnected ideas and things.
I tagged this summer as a research summer, because I know how hard summers are with all the kids home from school and fighting and asking for more food and tearing the house apart.
But when I don’t get a chance to write, the words start building up inside me, and I start feeling like a clogged pipe. The pressure is immense. I need an outlet.
Not to mention, notes came back from my publisher, and I needed time to make the edits. A deadline was looming.
So I started stealing moments where I could. The kids were out playing for a few minutes, and I would open my journal and start writing, and then one of them would come in to tattle on his brother, and I’d be annoyed that he was acting like a kid.
They’d be happily playing with the Legos on the floor, and I’d boot up my computer with the intention of breezing through the edits, and someone would interrupt me with a question, to which I would respond with annoyance—because he was displaying the curiosity of a kid.
They’d sit down to do their silent reading, and I’d pull out a book so I could make a little extra progress on my research, and as soon as I opened the book, someone would tap me on the shoulder, smile, and show me a page from his own book, and the look on my face would communicate my annoyance.
The other day I was cooking dinner, listening to a collection of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales, and the back door kept opening so that boys could come in to tell me about the grasshopper they’d caught and the rabbit they saw and how the birds were eating the bread they left out. I kept feeling that familiar flash of annoyance every time they interrupted—because my hands were messy and I had to push pause on my audiobook. So inconvenient.
And then one time they all filed back outside and I stood there working in silence, thinking about how I hadn’t been able to stop and look at my kids for the entire day. I dropped the dishes I was washing and stepped out onto the porch. They were all crowded in the middle of the yard, by a rock they’d lifted, under which were all sorts of fascinating bugs. I watched for a while.
And this is what I noticed:
A little boy’s feet streaked with dirt
Long eyelashes splayed against a smooth cheek
A brilliant smile from the one who successfully captured a grasshopper
The studied concentration of a boy trying to poke holes in a plastic container so the grasshoppers could breathe
A Batman cape, whipping in the wind
The exuberant laughter of a boy on a trampoline
These words now live in my diary, and I jot some down every day.
Our lives are full of inspiration and illumination. They are full of beauty and encouragement. They are full of LIFE, if we can only stop long enough to see it. It’s not easy. I know. There’s so much to do, all the time. How will we ever do it all?
I’m not convinced we will. And that’s okay. The important thing is that we’re living a full life—and the only way we can do that is by stopping, looking, listening, breathing, being.
