My curse on plays/That have to be set up in fifty ways. ~W. B. Yeats

After multiple revisions, it is humbling to realize that only now, in its I-don’t-know-how-many-eth iteration, have I found the heart of this book. As usual after completing a major stage of a large writing project, I’m experiencing the now-familiar feeling of having no more words left.

I have so few words left that it has taken me all afternoon to write this short post. I stopped right after I started, suited up, opened up the beehive, and moved the frames with some honey left down into a lower super just because it’s an unseasonably gorgeous day and the bees need food and I needed something to do other than try to think of words. I don’t have to think about the words I sing to the bees. We have a song that is our song, a song I sing them every time.

But now the bees are not in danger of starvation and the dog has been out and played and the pile of paperwork is vanquished and I still have no words yet lots of blogging intentions.

Even without words (or with few of them), the next story is knocking at the doors of my imagination.

This new one scares me. It feels more ambitious than anything I’ve attempted. It’s exciting. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to require research and writing outside my comfort zone. It’s going to take time. Lots of time. Like all exciting things, it kind of terrifies me. I teased out some very preliminary thoughts and questions this morning in response to this quote:

Those notes, and the pervasive sense of fear/excitement, are all I’ve got for now. It’s merely the envelope of a story, and yet everything is already written on it.

May good magic fuel all your ambitions. May the words come at the right time. And if you’re so inclined, I recommend singing to bees.