“It is a mysterious business, creating worlds out of words. I hope I can say without irreverence that anyone who has done it knows why Jehovah took Sunday off.” by Ursula LeGuin, “The Language of the Night”
Like LeGuin, I am a writer, but I am certainly no writer like LeGuin. As important as it is for me to write six days, it is as important for me not to write one day. We creative types tend to vacillate between laziness and hypergraphia.
Of course, my creativity does not remotely approach that of the Almighty, but He is my example. God took a day off, and so do I.
Lately, in between magazine cycles, I’ve taken a few days off. It has been one of my few mental breaks of the last, oh, eight years. Unemployment, then precarious employment, then more unemployment, then surgery for one child, then a move, then surgery for another child, then my mom’s cancer, then three family members–including her–dying within 14 months.
I wish I were enough of a writer to create worlds. I’d even settle for creating a measly novel. At the moment, the best I can do is to create a few poems. And take a day to read authors like LeGuin and drink quarts of tea.
