~~We had a beautiful day here in Kentucky country today. The sun was shining; the mercury was rising in the thermometers; the flowers were blooming; fishing worms were getting drowned; and sweaters were getting shucked. Spring is here and so now it must be time for a good case of Spring Fever.
~~Do you have it? What is it? A time for lazing in the first warm sunshine of the year? A time for throwing off all responsibilities and going hiking or fishing? What does Spring fever make you want to do or are you like Mark Twain says in the following quote?
“It’s Spring fever…You don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!“ ~Mark Twain
Maybe it’s not just Spring fever that makes you feel that way. I feel that way a lot when I’m writing, when I’m trying to tell my characters’ stories. I want to write a good story. No, I want to write a story better than good. I want to write something that will come to life in a reader’s imagination. Something that will sing. Something that will be totally made up but oh so true at the same time. And I’ve always wanted to write so much that it does sometimes make my heart ache. So maybe I have writing fever.
~~Trouble is the fever – just aching to write a good story – doesn’t produce the words. That takes fingers on the keys. I’m trying to meet a quota of pages a day. Words would be better because you can cheat a little with pages. Five or six lines in and you can convince yourself you’ve done a page when actually you’ve got about twenty lines to go. But when the fever is on and then Spring fever comes knocking too with all that warm sunshine, sometimes I just melt down like butter in a hot skillet.
~~I met with a lovely book club in Taylorsville, KY last night. It was fun hearing the ladies talk about what they liked about my book, The Believer. Everybody loves Hannah in that book and Issachar – a couple of supporting characters who really make a difference in the story. And Hannah would definitely have Spring fever and run off to the woods to climb some trees.
~~What does Spring fever make you want to do? Whatever it is, if you’re in this part of the country the next two days are going to be really good days to treat that “fever.”