Under the Umbrella

When I go to the beach, my work-in-progress often languishes. Funny. You'd think that time away would mean more time spent writing, but that rarely happens.

Still, the urge to write (or maybe it's just guilt) nags at me, and in the end, a different kind of writing often wins out.

I often have a blog extravaganza.

Maybe it's the vastness of the sand and sea that make the list of available topics seem equally vast. I don't know. I just know that after a day or so at the beach, if you give me a notebook and a pen and plop me under a beach umbrella, the words just flow.

Sometimes this happens with aspects of my work-in-progress, too - typically character development and backstory. But most often, the free flow of random ideas produces blog posts that aren't limited to the minutiae of daily life.

Time away - especially at the shore - is like taking a full body stretch after a long day of work: freeing, relaxing and a reminder that there's so much more to life than simply the tasks that fill our days. I sometimes wonder if this would still be the case if I lived at the beach year-round. While I'd be happy to test that hypothesis, it isn't in the cards any time soon, so for now, I'll have to make the most of my time under the umbrella.