After our house had been on the market for almost a year, we decided that it might well take another year to sell. We decided to live our lives as almost nomads, trying not to let the fact that we owned a nice house influence us unduly. So we agreed to housesit for a friend in Alabama in October for two weeks. Several years ago I established that I could work on my writing from anywhere, especially if I had the chance to get into a routine. Two weeks was enough time to get some writing done and still explore Birmingham and enjoy warmer weather.
Although it wasn’t always sunny, it was warmer in Birmingham than in Illinois, and we did a lot of hiking. We also checked out meetup.com and found a very active board game group, so we played board games several times. We also went to an interesting book discussion through the Homewood library and went to the 17th annual Birmingham food festival. We visited the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. We also hiked a lot, especially Ruffner Mountain. And we played with the cat we were watching.
I didn’t incorporate any of our experiences directly into my writing, but it did feel like I was refilling my creativity well.
