“Starting to write feels like standing, in the early morning light, at the edge of a cold swimming pool; toes curled over the ledge, hands raised above my head, knees bent, waiting for the moment when I decide to push off....”

I am being nudged back into writing. Gently, but insistently, I am getting messages to start again, to put the words in my head into form. When I am awake, and now even when I am asleep, the backlog of stories is straining against the circumstances that have kept me away. I read often that we should focus our energy on work we love. Do I love writing? No. Not in the way that I love to read, or sip fine wine, or travel, or walk in the woods. I am driven to write, it insists itself into my life. It renders me vulnerable and uneasy and self conscious. It will not be ignored, not for long.

Starting to write feels like standing, in the early morning light, at the edge of a cold swimming pool; toes curled over the ledge, hands raised above my head, knees bent, waiting for the moment when I decide to push off, suspended for a moment in thin air before plunging into the water, bracing, thrilling, emerging and gasping for air and so incredible delighted to be once again moving through water, at home again. It’s the decision to lift off that holds the power of beginning again and again, despite the initial discomfort, that moment when the forces holding me back give way to the forces propelling me forward. I love it when I’m finally in the water, at the desk, coming up for air, again and again, immersed in it all. And then, only then, do I ask myself why I have waited so long.