Hello fellow insecure writers!
Now it is August - such a wonderful time of the year in this part of the world. I can usually walk down the road and down the path to a tiny beach and have a dip in our bay, and the tomato plants are starting to fruit. I have about eight of them and they are over five feet tall and just a bursting with tiny tomatoes or flowers. The basil has gotten over being shy and is getting nice and bushy. The peas are just about all picked and we'll be taking down the old stocks. The garlic is almost ready to harvest too. We already got a huge amount of bok choy and I'm hoping my two or three squash plants will do their thing - early days for them. I'm going to look up what one does with an overly enthusiastic lavender plant too. In the flower bed the daylilies are going gangbusters and the hydrangea is starting to do its thing. The beautiful little snapdragons I started from seed are blooming and my tiny rose bush has two blooms on it. All is happy.
And yet...we have had quite the summer with environmental disasters. In June we had terrible forest fires in an area not to far from us. Many houses were lost but no lives. Our bags were packed for a quick getaway. The air was thick with smoke. And a week and a bit ago we had torrential rains in almost all of Nova Scotia. People were flooded out, many roads are still impassable. We had friends who'd driven from Indiana to an orchardist convention and they had to spend the night at a highway exit - unable to go in either direction. Four people died in the flooding, one adult, one teenager and two small children. Hearts are very heavy.
Because of this, I suppose, I have been struggling with nihilistic thoughts. It has been hard to get to my writing when I cannot imagine that it is of any use in a civilization that seems intent on destroying itself. The worst night of the rain storm I woke to hear the rain beating down as it had been doing for eighteen hours by then and felt such despair. No one alive today who has lived in Nova Scotia for seventy years or more has seen anything like it. The news tells me of people in North America dying from the heat because they are trying to carry on as usual. That notion that we can just keep on is not to me sensible in any way. Today when I sit on my deck and take in all the growth in my garden it is hard to imagine the fury of the fires and the pummeling of the rain. All seems so peaceful and fruitful.
Still, I go to my computer early in the morning, while it is still breezy and cool, and I write. I work on various projects - my second Nell book, and a book that I shelved ten years ago that I now realize is quite pleasing to me, and maybe deserves to be trundled out to the various publishers and so on. So, in fact, sensible or no, I carry on.
How about you? How do you find strength in troubling times?
9 comments:
Very sorry about all the disasters in your area. But that's why we write - to help people escape the horrors of real life.
Glad you didn't have any issues with the fires, but I'm sure it was scary for a while.
I try to limit my news intake when things are troubling (which they have been for quite a few years, now! I find I can read the news but watching it makes it too heavy). I also spend more time reading and writing.
So sorry that you're going through the fires and excessive rain. I'm glad you're able to find time to write. Sometimes writing in hard times comforts me and helps me get through the challenges I'm going through. I hope it helps you during your hard times.
Fires and flooding are scary. I just have to tune all of that stuff out to write. Not easy because as Elizabeth said, the past couple years have gotten more and more depressing.
I too write in the early morning before the rest of the world is awake. That seems to protect me from excess, but climate change is now bringing harsh realities. Part of me wants to say, yes, we need to try to continue to live as we have done in the past, but these disasters are facing us all. People are starting to move away from higher risk areas, while others may not be able to do so. I hope the coming seasons return to more normal weather for you there in Novia Scotia.
You've really had to deal with unprecedented environmental crises, Jan. I truly hurt for you. I wish healing to everyone impacted. And the fact is, when one part of the earth hurts, we all do.
I give you credit for carrying on, even in the midst of everything. And I'm very glad there is harvest to remind everyone that life continues.
Sometimes the best way to deal with real-world disasters is to write ourselves into a different world...
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