I’ve had a busy summer. Summers are always busy. By fall I am looking forward to a routine. I read a quote the other day that helps me understand why I need some sort of schedule in my life.

‘Be regular and ordinary in your life so that you my be violent and original in your work’ Gustave Flaubert

Now I don’t know anything about Gustave Flauber except he identified a very good reason for living my ordinary life on auto-pilot as much as possible. I don’ t write the sort of stories that have violence in them and perhaps that wasn’t even what he meant. But I do need to have my mind available for creativity.

Now that might mean different things to different people. Perhaps a quiet beach stay.  Or a secluded patio.                            

For others it might mean a regimented schedule with events happening at exactly the same time every day. Or it might mean living life simply.

For me I suppose it means reducing the external demands, trying to be organized about meals and all those other things required in running a household.

At times it can be exhausting. Yet there is a calmness to routine even when it’s hectic. It frees my mind to think about my stories.

Which reminds me, I was asked to be one of two authors in a 2 novella-collection for Christmas 2010. That sounds like a long way off but the story has to be delivered by December of this year. When I was first asked, I wondered if I had time to do it and if I could write a story in half the word length I usually do. But the story exploded from my brain and I am happy with it. I hope the editor likes it too.  It’s a cowboy Christmas story.