A Writer’s Wilderness

There is a great in-between for creators. I’m in it now. A draft of a novel, completed and set aside. No new tale begun. No new tale even imagined. A lull.

Isn’t lull a beautiful word? Beautiful in sound, beautiful in meaning. The heart of lullaby. Kin to loll. Singing, sleeping, rocking, calm.

In a recent exchange of emails, I mentioned to a writer friend that I was in this lullsome state and realized after sending my message that my friend might think I’m depressed about this condition. I’m not. Though I don’t have a plan for a project, I’m enjoying my spell of anticipation. It’s a happy time, this dreaming, meandering hush. I read and read, all sorts of things, poems and plays, news and novels. I sit and think. I walk and watch. I dwell in possibility. I know there’s a novel out there somewhere, a gift for me. I can’t open it yet. I can’t even spy it. It’s hidden, like a living treasure, a rare bird nesting in a tree among trees, a tree in a thick forest.

While I was working on my last novel, my mind was a garden: planted, regularly watered and weeded, on its way to bearing fruit. There is no garden now. There’s only wilderness. I’m silent, wandering, lost in the loveliest way. When the gift’s ready to be found, it will sing, “Here I am,” and call me closer.

I will hear it because I have been listening.