Camp pic, circa mid70s. Author on far left.

We were only there for a week, Sunday to Saturday, but it seemed that entire lifetimes took place during those days.  Romances and friendships built and lost, discoveries about self and place uncovered, dreams forged and reinforced.  On the last day, we all had our group photo signed, and hugged each other as if all was lost, and cried our eyes out.   In the backseat on the way home, I was silent and distant, lost in memories, crushed that it was over for another year.

Back home, it was a slam back into everything ordinary.   The ordinary green telephone on the wall.  The ordinary food.  No singing.  No long deep discussions about…well, anything.  For days, I would be lost in mourning, sure I would never, ever have a good time again.

As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate coming home to ordinariness, but I still love getting ready for a trip, making a list, checking things off, packing special totems, creating rituals.   I learned during those weeks at camp that every journey was a lifetime and I was changed by each one.  Sitting in the meadow at La Foret Camp (which is, ironically, only about a ten minute drive from my current home—it wasn’t even very far away in those days), I dreamed a life for myself.  I learned to connect to other travelers—my fellow campers—and I learned to think outside of the box, challenged by counselors to make us do just that.  (I also learned just about every folk and bible and church song known to modern woman—and you would think that my fellow pilgrims would have appreciated that on the Camino.  Somehow, they liked listening to Bethany, the trained professional opera singer better.)

Anyway.

Before I left for Europe in June, my creative well was very low indeed.  I wouldn’t say dry, but a voice shouting down into it would echo for a long time before hitting water.  It’s a normal part of the process, and probably because of the loss of my Sasha and the long months nursing her, I was a little more weary than usual.  I also had that nagging knee injury, which is not terrible, but is sort of…annoying, you know?

Whatever the reason, I was empty and sick of working by June. The great luxury of a writing life is the time

to go wandering.  I went to camp, first with CR to England and then with a group of women on the Camino, and I still wasn’t finished, because then we went to Orlando, where I spent the first half with my dearest writing buddies, and the second half with CR, playing at Disneyland.

Not only did I wander and chat and think about life in small and large ways, I read like a junkie, popping one book after another in a wild lust for story.  Australian writers, English writers, a bunch of Americans.  Fiction and non-fiction.  Adult and young adult.  Spanish and English. Reading, reading, reading, reading.

What I did not do is write.  I kept a journal, as always, and I wrote the odd blog post or Facebook missive, but other than that, nothing. I didn’t think much about writing, either, and when ideas started pushing into my imagination, auditioning for the next spot, I shoved them away.  Once in awhile, I took a note or two on my phone. Once in awhile, I woke up and thought, “Hmm, that has some merit.”

Mostly, I ignored every single one of them.

The result?

The well is overflowing.  I’ve been in a working frenzy, sometimes working on two different things in a single day because when I’ve reached the end of the juiciness on one project, I find there is energy and excitement left for another bout, so I change locations and start work on the other one.   One morning, an idea I’ve been shoving away for about two years awakened me and dragged me to the computer and didn’t let me go until well after lunch.

It’s lovely.  It’s like going to camp and getting the good stuff afterward, too.  Filling the well is always, always worth it, and I haven’t been taking enough time to do that.  Not at all interested in travel for a little while, you understand, but I am going to go to movies a couple of times a month, and play with my collages (which I realized recently don’t have to be about books all the time) and water color pencils.  I’m taking cello lessons.

It’s all material, right?

Did you go to camp as a child?  Do you fill the well with travel or by some other means?  What hobbies give you that sense of exuberance, whether or not you are a writer?

So now I’m catching up on the multitudes of tasks that have fallen by the wayside while I immersed in this book.  Catching up on email from readers (please be patient with me if you emailed and I haven’t yet responded–I answer them all myself and it takes time, but I will get to every single one of them), catching up on blogs, catching up with friends I haven’t seen in a couple of months.   Walking. Studying Spanish.  Reading. Dancing.

What I’m really doing most of the time is packing and repacking in my head.  My goal is to make it through England and Spain, four weeks, with one carry-on and a backpack.  So, no more than two pairs of shoes.  One fleece and one turtleneck and one rainjacket.  A dress that packs very well, some leggings, and scarves to accessorize.   I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve been walking many miles every week, aiming for at least 30, and only making that rarely.  This week, I had the exuberant pleasure of dancing with Carlos AyaRosas, one of the founders of Nia, who is retiring this year.  Under other circumstances, I would have cut back on the dancing to give my body a chance to adjust to the extra walking miles, but how could I forgo that chance?  No way!

It was deliciously exhilarating! Carlos is a very physical dancer, and a great teacher, with an entirely different style than our (beloved) Loretta Milo.  The workshop was two hours and we danced our heads off–the kind of dancing that makes you forget everything and sweat away all stress and fill up entirely with joy.  I have been faithfully attending at least one, and sometimes three, classes a week since I began eighteen months ago. I always learn something new about my body or the music or how to count something that had eluded me before, but dancing with Carlos and his wife, who looks like she might be half-fey, coming out of the trees just to teach us to dance, and having the pleasure of watching Loretta and some of the other black belts lose themselves in the dance was…pure flame, pure notes, pure love.  I wish you could all have been there with me.

Have you ever tried something new that ran away with your heart?

THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING

To celebrate, I’ll offering a some little contests and giveaways over the next few weeks. This is the first one.  I am giving away 4 free ARCs of THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING.  As soon as I draw names, I’ll run to the post office and mail them out, so you will have it by next Friday. 

To win, just go to barbaraoneal.com and leave your name and email in the comments and I’ll draw 4 names on December 8.   You should have it a couple of days later!

Check back next week for another giveaway.

Now, I realize that many people do not like to be alone all that much, but writers tend to require vast amounts of solitude.  Coming into my office this morning felt like entering a church. My sanctuary, complete with altar in the corner, and all my books and music, the posters on the wall and the calendars, all my tools of creativity.  There is a small, stuffed orange bear that someone gave me at a conference, while I was in the midst of writing The Lost Recipe for Happiness, which has a restaurant named The Orange Bear. I took it as a good sign.  

It is not a particularly tidy place—there are too many little collections of things, too many papers and photos and feathers and books for that—but I do like to keep it clean, and most Saturday afternoons, I collect all the scattered notes I’ve written, the sixteen pens and dry erase markers I’ve been using, the printed pages from the MIP, and put everything where they belong.  This Monday morning, nothing has been put away because I was busy with Thanksgiving, and that’s the way it should be.  I forget that I need a transition day after a big rush—after Thanksgiving or a vacation or the RWA conference.  I need to collect myself, come back to the quiet of my mind.

It isn’t that I don’t love Thanksgiving.  It’s one of my favorites.  (“They’re all your favorites,” said my ex once.) I love big fat turkeys and stuffing and an ambling walk with family members.  I love having my children around, adore the luxury of time to listen to them talk about their lives.  I love the cooking, the preparation, all of it.

I also love this, the Monday morning after.  Christopher Robin and Miles are off to work. Ian is back to his home in Washington DC.  There is no shopping I must accomplish, no urgent cleaning tasks. The dishwasher is humming with an ordinary load of breakfast dishes.  Outside it is a crisp blue Colorado day.  In my office, my sanctuary, I am writing.

As I put words on the page, at first in a scattered way, then a little more solidly, I feel my spirit coming to light, nourished by this simple, ordinary act.  Here is where I am most myself, here in this quiet, coolly lit room, putting words on the page.  Here, when I am in my own mind. Here, where I have space and time to reflect and think and imagine.

I know we aren’t supposed to identify ourselves by the work we do—that it is somehow seen as a flaw of our essential humanity—but honestly, I am a writer. That’s not just what I do.  It is a huge part of who I am.  It is how I process everything.  As I write these words, snippets of the holidays come floating back—the laughter of my eldest son, the pleasure my father took in the apple-blackberry crumble I made for CR, the huge amounts of help my youngest son offered getting things ready and clean and together, the walk I had with my mother.  There are the small, poignant moments of recognition—this is Sasha’s last Thanksgiving.  Ian has found his home, and it is a long, long way from me.  The comfort is that he’s doing work he loves as madly as I love mine, and only the proper choice of a spouse will make so much of an impact on his quality of life.

This is all part of my post-holiday ritual, coming into my office with an extra cup of coffee, grounding myself with the act of writing.  My dog needs a walk, and I need to read the pages I’ve been writing, and then, perhaps, by the end of the day, I’ll be able to write a page or two.  By tomorrow, I’ll be fully back, and ready to write more productively.

How do you ground yourself after the big roar of a major holiday? Do you have rituals?