The last several days in SoCal have just been fantastic. Cool, lovely and no winds. Flowers everywhere, and no heat whatsoever.
Although I have significant hearing loss, I can hear children playing and talking outside my window, and sprinkers and water hoses are gushing. It’s a good time now for everyone here.
Before too long, the summer heat will be setting in.
I think that writers should not really be writing during summer times. Well, perhaps I should say they should do a bit less writing. If you look at many successful writers, many travelled extensively. Good classic examples are Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Jack London.
I’m going to be busy this week planning my summer schedule. It’s going to be much easier doing what I want to do, mainly because my younger daughter is out of school. It gives me more time to do other things.
Recently I went to a fundraising walk in Long Beach. It was right by the ocean too. The weather was fabulous down there. I met many new people and learned many new things. It generated a lot of new ideas for my writing, for the next several weeks.
I think summertime is the best season for learning and doing new things that are outside your comfort zone. It’s the best time to think and plan for your future too. Be lazy physically, but thinking hard.
For this season, I suggest you get a pad of paper and a pen, and go outside somewhere frequently. Start making a list of things you haven’t done yet. Include travel spots, new restaurants and social and local nature locations you haven’t been to yet. Include water locations, such as a lake. Then do them. You won’t regret it. If anything, it will make you a more interesting person because you have something new to share when you come back.
Writers do well in new places. This is because we’re always registering things happening, and recording them in our brains. And then it comes out through our writing.
If there is anything that inspires me to write, it is traveling to water locations. I love water in all forms. I especially like waterfalls. If I could, I would travel to every major waterfall in the world. I am so lucky to be living in California, because we have some of the best waterfalls in the world, and that would be in Yosemite National Park. (If you never have been there, this is the year to go. The waterfalls are awesome, due to the heavy Sierra snowpack this year.)
This is why I have waterfalls as part of my blogs. Water is essential, it will eventually arrive, no matter what, and is beautiful in all shapes and forms. It can go over, under, or around obstacles. We cannot live without it, and life cannot occur without it.
I have a project for those who don’t know what to do this summer. Go somewhere where there is water. Go to the ocean, rivers, creeks, puddles, waterfalls, lakes, streams, hot springs, swimming pools, sprinklers, waterslides, waterparks, whatever. Where there is water, there is bound to be something happening there.
Summertime is here, so go out and enjoy. And I will too.
