This Is Where They Are

I took the day off to write and read. Today is my birthday, so I gave myself that gift.

I was desperate to get through a passage of my novel which I have been struggling with for weeks. So I sat down with it this morning and I knew what a mess it was. I could not understand why every paragraph started on the off beat, why each word came in on the wrong note.

I sat for a long time. I rearranged. I rewrote. But it still wasn't right. Why couldn't I be in that scene? What was it I couldn't understand?

Then I said, "That's it. I'm going there."

I grabbed my notebook and a purple pen. I got on my bike. And I went to the pier.

It's only a few minutes away. Why hadn't I thought of it sooner?

I pictured all of my characters in the very place I sat. It was, after all, the exact setting I had imagined when I first wrote the scene.

And I wrote, far away from my little office, away from my computer. In these wild winds swooping across the pier. In the daylight. On paper. With a (gasp) pen.

And I thought: Yes. This is where they are. Exactly where I always imagined them being.

It was such a relief.