Pregnancy (it’s a metaphor)

Traveling always wreaks havoc on my writing – blogging included. Yesterday my family and I drove 12 hours (plus more to accommodate a 6 year old’s bladder) from Durham, NC to Buffalo, NY. Needless to say, neither writing nor blogging got done. I know people who can blog/write while they travel, but I don’t seem to be some of them.

But now that I’m here, I can blog, write, read and plan, in between family visitation. Which is good, cause I’ve got stuff on my mind, which is the topic of today’s blog post.

I feel pregnant.

Now, as I’ve actually been pregnant, I don’t literally feel pregnant. Pregnancy felt bloated, anxious, and all wiggly inside. It wasn’t not a feeling connected to creating, even though that’s what I was doing.

But the metaphor of feeling pregnant before you create still seems to apply, even though a cynical part of my brain has to be told to shut up when she pipes up (writing a book is nothing like labor – there’s no blood, no vomit, no epidural to make things easier or to fail horribly, you don’t tear, you don’t have people calling you the wrong name as they’re coaching you to push…)

Ahem.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling this great sense of potential. It’s hiding there, behind a tree. Sometimes it looms and scares me a little bit. I feel like I need to put away the shiny electronic devices and get out the old pen and paper to make some notes.

I wonder what’s lurking there, what baby is waiting to come out. What scares me is that I already have many, many projects in the queue. Apart from my WIP (Heaven Season Five: WAR), there are four more novels waiting. Also two podiodrama series. And an unknown number of freelance gigs to come in between now and, uh, later.

I’m itching to outline, to plan. I’m reading an ARC of Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife and it’s already speaking volumes to me. Perhaps it’s the inspiration. I don’t know. All I know is I need to get back to that whole creating thing. Finish one project so I can move onto the next.

I feel vague. Unsure of myself. But absolutely full of potential.

Writing prompt for June 20: The nicest lady in town is middle aged, widowed, and has the largest private collection of carnivorous plants (even some contraband) in the US.