The Tortoise

[whipchick]

I always watch for the tortoise. The back wall of the writing studio is mostly a floor-to-ceiling window about eight feet wide, one vast sheet of glass holding the Florida scrubland outside. There’s a white dirt road behind a strip of live oaks and sumac and Spanish moss, and once, in the middle of an afternoon workshop, I saw a tortoise stumping

Comments

[kathrynrose]

The financial aid is excellent and the tortoise is probably plural.

I love your post scripts. :)

The picture is great. I love that he has a little fresh green schmutz in the corner of his mouth.

[whipchick]

Isn't that sweet? It's warming up this week so fingers crossed he stumps into my life again!

[witchwife]

It's always interesting to get a snapshot of someone else's life as a writer. This makes me wonder what my writing spirit animal would be. (Probably a sloth!)

This was an absolute pleasure to read!

[kathrynrose]

(Probably a sloth!)

LOL!

[ellison]

I LOVE sloths!

[bleodswean]

Nicely done; with the prompt and an illustrative photograph! When you discuss the "writer's life" you want (and don't want), I find myself responding in kind and do, then, wish for a like-minded group to be surrounded by. Just for that very kind of dialogue. It sounds as though you're getting what you want/need right now out of this current experience!

[halfshellvenus]

This is not the writing life I want. This is the writing life I want.
This ambivalence... in your shoes, I would be happy to have the opportunity and yet the flip side would be the sense of pressure to produce, to make the most of the opportunity. Which is a mood and muse squelcher right there.

"I can" on the one side, "I should" on the other. Being independently wealthy is about the only thing that would relieve that feeling!

I'm glad that you're thinking about whether these meds are quite right at the moment (cutting back too much, maybe?). That urge to withdraw is one of my own signs of depression, and that you're aware of what that behavior can mean really helps.

[alycewilson]

What a marvelous idea, that a tortoise can be your talisman and signal good writing. Maybe those are the weeks that you are more in tune with the world around you.