holiday creativity

One reason I love the holiday season is because it is often my time to chase dreams. Paying work slows to a trickle (please, God, let it be just the holiday lull) and, in between pleasant holiday chores (baking, sewing), I turn my attention to the dream work that requires an up-front gamble of time.

This is the time for crafting thoughtful queries to dream markets. For polishing fiction. For gathering the courage to look at the book proposal I started a year ago and have let languish for many months. (I’m terrified to look—what sort of mess is it?)

Maybe nothing will come of any of this—that’s why it’s so easy to let it fall aside in favor of dull-but-paying work. But if not for this pie-in-the-sky work, why bother being a writer? OK, it’s not really pie in the sky. It’s more a shot in the dark. But I believe. I believe something will hit someday. Yes I do. (Do you know how much I want just one, really big success? It’s true. My friends know it. I want my 15 minutes.)

So at this time of year, I bake and write and sew and write and eat and write and my brain unclenches and I feel loose and creative and kind of fat, actually. There’s already far too much chocolate in this house.