I am writing again. I wasn’t worried about the not-writing, because I knew I would settle back into the routine soon. Until the last month, I have written pretty much every day for years. And I don’t mean journal writing (I’m actually horrible at keeping journals alive, but that’s a thought for another day). I mean going in and daily touching the world of whatever project I am working on. I have spoken before about my writing routine and how it’s been in flux since I had a kid, but even when that kid was brand new and I was laid up with a birth injury, I wrote every day, on my phone, in a daze. I wrote about what it felt like to be torn open, to be forced to surrender to the care of others, not because I thought anyone would ever read those words but because that is what I do, I write every day.

Those phone notes to self from the beginning of what turned out to be a long, slow healing process formed the foundation for my main other project, this nonfiction thing I’ve been turning to between bursts of work on the novel. Now, this project is what I have returned to, because I feel like it’s almost what it wants to be, and the excitement over an almost-finished draft is pulling me back into my routine.

So I am back at it, early mornings at my desk, alone with my project files. My desk is in a temporary apartment because we are renovating our apartment and (finally!) giving the kid a room of his own. And though the moving and the renovating are part of what has kept me from my novel, the world of the novel does sometimes reach out and touch me, like when we uncovered this 1930s wallpaper under the chair rail in our kitchen.

Look at those sweet flowerpots!

There is a Mini 1000 starting next weekend, and for the first time I will not be participating. This other project is calling my name, and I want to see it to the finish line.