Creating: Writing Experiences

Otherwise known as recharging your batteries.

While we need those long breaks where we don't write but spend the time being a sponge and soaking up everything around us, we can also benefit from our daily excursions and everyday errands.

Last Friday I drove up to Austin to meet Hart Johnson of Confessions of a Watery Tart, who was in town for a convention. We sat at a little table on the sidewalk and, since you all know what a klutz I am, I'll fess up. I bumped the table and spilled my coffee and hers, and it all went more in her direction than mine. She didn't beat me with her bag.

But it's a good thing I made the coffee mess or I might not have turned my mug around and seen the lipstick imprint. Eewwww!

Anyway...Hart is a fantastic woman, and I had a wonderful time talking to her over coffee. In a new clean mug. Not only that, but I came away with a few new city impressions. Even better, I know there will be a coffee incident in my next manuscript :)

On Saturday I went to our local HEB, the big Texas supermarket chain. I walked in the door, and a woman on the right was cooking and giving free samples of something Asian. Normally I would have gone right over, but on Saturday the smells were a little wonky. No, thanks - I walked past. Fast.

I went out a different door - through the garden center. OMG! Fabulous floral scents. I don't know all the flowers that were blooming, but I actually stopped for a few seconds just to sniff the simple yet complex aroma. Sweet and floral, of course. A tang of spice, a touch of something pungent.

It's a good thing I'm not a bee. I would've been intoxicated from all the aromas. I wanna go here. No, here. Ooh, over here! Come to think of it, maybe that's what happens to butterflies as they loop around from flower to flower.

So the takeaway here is: Be Receptive.

Be receptive to everything, everywhere. Open your mind. Experience life.

Write it down.