My Brief Visit to the Mountaintop

By Keith N Fisher

I did two days of job workshops and a licensing test this week. Finding time to write and do the things that refresh my soul was difficult. Do you sometimes envy those poor souls who sit on mountaintops? I mean the metaphorical gurus who escaped society and wait for someone to make a pilgrimage to ask the meaning of life. Those guys have nothing to do but ponder the important questions and impart their wisdom.

During busy days when I try and carve out writing time, I do envy them. It seems, however, that whenever the planets align themselves just right, giving me time to write I worry about the future and taking care of the necessary things of life. I long for time with nothing to do but write.

I’m sure retirement (if I can ever afford it) will be a nightmare of epic proportions. Unless I can inherit a box of cash and have all my obligations taken care of.

With that being said, I carved out a morning to write this week and things fell in line. My characters formed a committee and pushed away my worries. We wrote several chapters on the sequel to The Hillside. Now, I have 85,477 words and I only have three or four chapters left to write.

I tell you this, not to brag, (well, maybe a little) but to express my gratitude for the opportunity of artistic expression. Can you imagine life without something to fulfill your need to create?

Some people fill the need by building empires. Some dream of the perfect heist, then after they get caught, they dream of the perfect prison break. I get to do all three in the pages of my manuscript. I’m grateful for the blessing of writing and this week, I’m grateful for the morning when the planets aligned, and I was able to write.

Maybe someday I’ll be that guru sitting on the mountaintop of my front porch or a camp trailer near a lake. I’ll rise in the morning and make perfect paragraphs. Then, if someone comes asking the meaning of life, I’ll hand them the scriptures, and go back to writing. Then when I finish the scene I was working on, I’ll give my visitor a cup of hot chocolate and talk about life.

Good luck with your writing—see you next week.