These Moments pass Swiftly

Before leaving for work this morning, I was telling my wife how much of a difference a few minutes delay can make in my commute. I told her that if I didn’t time my drive right, I would get caught in traffic and add as much as 20 minutes to my travel time. Well, I happened to be leaving a couple minutes later and knew there would be some delay. Then I walked out the front door and saw this:

Sunrise, July 29 2013

 I called my wife over and snapped a couple photos before suddenly, it ended. And that was that.

I think that some of the most spectacular moments in life are like this sunrise. They arrive and pass so swiftly that, most of the time, we miss them. In this crazy fast world of digital real time living, it’s easy to overlook the little miracles that shape most of our existence. I have seen the sunrise most of the days of my life, but I have never seen one like this and I’m not soon to forget this one either.

Happy living.

 ~ Jamie

Revisiting old Stories

I feel like a hoarder. Not of objects, but of stories. I have a lot of stories. They are swarming around in my mind, fighting for position near the front of my consciousness, all hoping to become the next project to make it onto my screen. There are so many stories that I think I might explode until I get them out. So I’m writing as fast and as often as I can, which isn’t as fast and as often as I need.

My latest project is an experiment into Middle Grade fiction. It’s a book loosely based on a story I imagined back in 2008 when I decided to try writing again. I started writing that book with absolutely no idea how to begin. I only knew that I wanted to create a story, and a novel seemed like the best way to do that. After a few days, the project died—or rather, my laptop died. I dropped it and the screen went dark. I kept the laptop so that I could retrieve the data later.

A few weeks ago, I salvaged the old idea and decided it was worth investing in. Now it’s a living, breathing project with hope and 15,000 words. I can already tell that a few years of consistent writing and a handful of completed novels have helped make this story much better than what it would have been in 2008.

So that’s where I’m at. While every idea that comes to me doesn’t immediately turn into my current WIP, all of them get written down and stored until later. Someday, sometime, I might turn to these dusty old files I keep and turn them into a novel. One day, they might even sell. Until then, I’m gonna keep writing and gonna keep dreaming. Because that’s what makes this writing adventure so fun.