Tangled branches and writing

I’m a big believer in this Mary Heaton Vorse quotation: The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

I have to confess, my chair has not seen a lot of action lately, for all sorts of reasons, mostly the effect of distractions big and small, including a fraught holiday season during a pandemic. My creative brain has been pretty much a void for weeks. Maybe months.

But now that the new year is here and I’m looking ahead to what will or what might or what might not happen in 2021, I find myself starting to twitch a bit. Standing at the kitchen door looking out at my backyard – cardinals and chickadees sparring for safflower at the feeder; a pine bough, heavy with snow, touching the ground to form an arch; the snowy branches of a honeysuckle tangled against the sky – I’m starting to hear the voices of as-yet-unwritten characters talking among themselves. Nothing clear. Nothing important. Just voices – characters – starting to tangle up together in my creative brain. 

Sort of like the branches of my honeysuckle.

So, I’m not worried. I’ll just stand here for a while, sip my tea, watch the birds, listen to the voices, try to see through the tangled branches, and know that as long as I’m listening, I’m also writing.