I want to tell you about finishing at 3a.m., when every last image was uploaded, processed, and correctly named, and every combed over.
The house so quiet that it seemed to hum. Coyotes called when the moon came up, and later owls. A pair of screech owls in particular held a caucus: One shrieking to the other from the branches of dark trees—some kind of ruckus promise people don’t usually hear.
Each night for a week I watched the sky go from black to indigo in the pre-dawn hours, slept less than a handful of hours, and then woke to continue again, because the night hours are the only uninterrupted hours around here (when the only sounds are of dreams, and wind pulling around the house, and wild animals doing what they do.) Then, on a Wednesday night, finally, I was finished.
I went to bed quietly, folding into the pocket of warmth beside T like a small origami bird, with no one awake to witness those first moments just after I hit "send." And in the morning I woke to coffee and fried eggs and little boy yelling and the fact that I was at the beginning of something utterly new.
A new voice. A new angle + slant. A book for your hands to hold next fall.
There are so many things I want to tell you about the messy, beautiful, exhilarating process--and about what's next: The ideas and dreams and plans to come. On Monday: A post about creative constraints and the process of illustrating the book...
But for now, simply this: I couldn’t have survived without Coffee. Or chocolate (in terribly copious amounts.) Or hot showers. Or my small legion of superheroes: T, my in-laws and two friends in particular who, on their respective coasts, nudged and encouraged and pushed me to be my biggest, bravest, truest self.
And YOU.
You, the wanderers and wonderers who come here with bright words and big hearts. I'm so grateful, always for you and your comments. Tell me: When was a time you took an enormous leap? What did it feel like? What happened next?