Winter Words

My mother's photo of mice prints in the snow.

This is a day with breathing space, with room to move.
The wind outside may take our breath away and brings tears to our eyes but the push to get the essays of Section Three of the Field Notes book finished -- the section with the fewest "pre-completed" essays in it -- is over. The old way of describing my work is to say that I put at least 13,000 words down on paper this week but in the 21st century, I suppose it's more accurate to say I keyboarded more than 13,000 words into the computer.
Not quite as romantic sounding.Can't work it into a metaphor about the foot prints of mice on the snow and the scratch marks of my pen on paper.
I discovered that writing three essays a day is not ideal for me; I can do it, and maybe I'd accomplish it by suppertime if I lived alone (not wishing! not wishing! just saying...), especially since my mother baked cookies during Wednesday's snowstorm and they were VERY distracting to someone trying to write! But for a slow writer like myself, and a writer who likes to take off on the snowshoes every so often for fresh air and fresh perspective, two essays a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, three to four thousand words a day, is just fine.
So as I turn my focus this morning to writing a sermon for church on Sunday, I can breathe again. Next week, the final week of writing first drafts, is lighter, and the heavy lifting of this week puts me a week ahead of schedule.
Off I scurry, to make tracks on a blank page.