Today I took the dog for a walk, nothing unusual about that but today I took a different route for a change. There’s a gate at the bottom of my garden that leads through to the common beyond. Sometimes I can walk for an hour and not see a soul. It’s a wonderful space to clear my head and think of story ideas and life in general.
A good walk can resolve a lot of problems. When my thoughts are clouded and I can’t resolve a plot problem a walk on the common will usually provide the necessary answers for when I return home. I usually do one of two set routes, taking about 30 – 40 minutes depending if I’m dawdling or walking to get my heart rate up. It was quiet and overcast and I wasn’t in a rush to get back so I decided to explore a bit. And what a revelation. Where parts of the common have been cleared of saplings, gorse and bracken this part was more forested and a small stream ran along part of the path. It was a whole other kind of beauty and Millie enjoyed running up and down the banks and leaping over the water. It woke me up, made me more alert, more aware of my surroundings as opposed to my thoughts.
It also made me think of how good it is to take a different path with your writing, going with another train of thought entirely to the one you had planned.
When I got back I tackled the next thing on my to-do list which was to sort through some old notebooks and this is what I found at the beginning of one of them.
Meandering leads to perfection; the crooked becomes straight, the empty full and the worn out new. Lao-Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
Is someone watching me?