Essentially, I am always writing. Walking down a wet Paris street I am taking everything in with all of my senses. The feast that is “Paris in the rain” will be stored inside my brain in a thousand different compartments. When I sit down to actually write, when I go searching inside the endless cubbies in my brain, I will slide open a drawer and voila, I will find just what I need, stored there weeks, months, years in the past, waiting for just the right opportunity to be useful. So no, I never feel guilty when I’m not writing because, in a way, for me, living life is writing. At least it has been until now.
Well said! And goes for illustrating as well as writing…
Thank you, Mother Fox.
I do that too. My problem is that when the time comes to open the appropriate drawer of memory, I discover it’s empty. And it has been happening more often as the years go by. Darn!
Haha. I find, Karen, that my drawers are never truly empty but I’m often surprised at what I find in them and can’t remember how certain things got in there and where I could possible have stowed other things I was certain I’d left there.
I can understand that about you, Karen. The way you absorb and observe the things around you is remarkable.
You, too, have a remarkable gift of observation, dear Jewel.