The best days are the days when I’m home. I’ve often said this. Now that I’m coordinating the Bright Lights Book Project, I’m often at the VCRS recycling center. On these days, I have a round trip commute. My mind is also on the work at hand. This means that things don’t get done around here. The horses get less attention and little writing gets done.

Still, I am doing well with what little time I have on the home front. Today I was at home. And I managed to get home-based stuff done. I also got in some much-needed thinking time. Thinking time – this is so very important to me. Gertrude Stein once said, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”

Tinni and Hrimi eating on a cold morning

I pretty much agree with what Stein says. Geniuses may not do much of anything. I’m not striving to be a genius. Rather, I’m striving to be an intelligent human being. I don’t have the time to do nothing, which is why I’m always on the move. But I am often doing what some would say is nothing, which are mundane tasks. For instance, some would see cleaning a horse pen as being a single-purpose task. However, this is when I generate and elaborate upon ideas that come to mind.

This morning, as I shoveled and raked poop, I thought some about my book project and where I was going with it. The final three chapters – these were the ones that were previously dead in the water. What to do about this? I hadn’t a clue. Then, in working on the third-to-last chapter, I inserted a line that was in need of a follow up. The setting is the Icelandic Horse Farm, in Vernon B.C. It’s the last day, and we attendees are wrapping things up. I am the last to speak. I tell the group about my failings with Raudi. Robyn Hood, who is the clinician-in-charge, finally says to me “she (meaning Raudi) chose you for a reason.”

I realized that it would then be up to me to tell my readers in the final few chapters what Raudi’s reason for choosing me might be. The problem was that I did not have a clue as to why this might be. Indicating otherwise would be disingenuous. I as a narrator could have said in the following chapters that I later realized, but this then would have disrupted narrative continuity.

It was as I was pitching a five-gallon bucket full of horse shit into the compost station that I had an ahh haa moment. It then occurred to me that I could include an epilogue, and there I speculate as to why I later thought Raudi decided that I should be her owner. Now, I don’t at this very minute know what these reasons are, but I suspect that they will materialize as I write the final chapter.

Yep, gotta have thinking time. I also have to continue to have contact with animals time. I also did agility with the horses today and got them out for a trail ride/walk. My focus was, of course, on them. This allowed my subconscious to further my thinking in regard to the above still problematic chapters.

It would be a lot easier to work at acquiring genius status. Right now, the thought of kicking back in a comfortable chair and just staring out the window for hours on end really does appeal to me.

Next: 21. 1/21/20: Keep the Ideas Coming