SOBERING TIMES
Fortuitous Tide
Reminder: Free short story – see below “A Pearl for Your Enjoyment”
Sobering times on so many levels.
First – post celebrations – Time to detox and banish that lazy hazy feeling.
Second – With our Covid torment still to reach its crisis these are truly sobering times.
There are so many more examples of sobering times currently out there. Can you drop in a few via the website contact or through the Facebook page?
Current Weather and Tides
Ho hum back to the drawing board. Clickity clackity keys.
I don’t suppose anyone out there has a photo of the mouth of Ward River on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula. I sure would like to see exactly what the area looks like from the ground.
Keep safe, Keep smiling, Keep reading, Keep writing.
Elizabeth Rimmington
www.elizabethrimmington.com.au
facebook.com/elizabethrimmington.author
A Pearl for your Enjoyment
This story evolved from a suggestion from our mentor to write something with a Christmas flavour:
SATISFACTION
Satisfaction – how sweetly it nestles inside oneself – the pavlova moment in writing.
The silly season of story possibilities, plot alternatives, swirling ideas eventually will end in accomplishment or disaster.
For me, it is currently an accomplishment but I am fully aware the disaster gremlin has a way of lurking in the most unexpected lairs.
Today I awoke with the resolving sense of where the number five novel is heading – of the plot outline. I know there is yet an overflowing wardrobe of facts I will need to discuss with Mr. Google if I wish to ensure a believable outcome but that will be addressed in small bites like savouring the fresh prawns at Christmas lunch.
Routine chores are ignored along with the dust on the shelves and the dirty clothes flowing over the edges of the laundry basket like boiling milk over the edge of the saucepan while my thoughts wander off with my creative spirits to caper over the fields of my imagination.
My fingers itch to caress the keyboard. They will not stay still. Like horses fed on oats for a week, they chew at the bit, paw the ground and threaten to jump the fence and gallop off into the distant unexplored pastures.
The first chapter almost writes itself. Excitement fills the room and fuels the mood. The child within investigates the lolly shop of wonder and imagination. What will I taste first? I hop from one counter to another. Exhaustion must win in the end but until then my eyes and ears, my sense of taste and touch are in a Christmas heaven of discovery and creating.
And there it is the dark gremlin of evil lands with a crash on my desk. High spirits whistle down to earth faster than a returning spaceship. The gremlin dissolves into a thick dark rubbery liquid mass absorbing everything in its sight. It suffocates the life and blood from all living creatures and thoughts.
The idea of the shipwreck of my historical fiction occurring on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula throws up challenges I am not sure I can overcome. Confidence disappears through the colander of my day. Large lumps of insecurity, introversion, disbelief in my abilities roll about in the bottom of the sieve staring me in the face. The sunshine seeps from the room as darkness fills the corners and slither over the office furniture.
Disappointment drips from the finger as it flicks the switch of the computer and shuts the lid. Experience has taught me in this situation it is best to call things quits and drag myself off to bed, or off to the laundry tubs. In the wee hours of the morning if not the next then maybe the one after, the solution will hit me like a cold bucket of water and send me flying into the office once again.
I find the more I force my mind to overcome the gremlins the more the gremlins win. My advice to others is to let your thoughts rest and ponder their dilemma in their own time.
Satisfaction will be mine again in a day or two or a week or two or maybe even longer. But it will return in its own time.
THE END.
