black sand dreaming

We came out here for a picnic tea twice this week. This is Whatipu, the beach right at the entrance of the harbour. It's not that far from our place, but most of the way there the road is narrow and windy and unsealed, so it takes a while. The road leaves Little Huia, a handful of houses at the edge of the water, and winds up the hills through thick bush. Occasionally you can see through the bush to the mouth of the harbour below. The sun was setting on the cliffs on the other side of the harbour each time we came, and they towered bright white above the blue sea. I've written to you before about wild places, but this is as wild as it gets.  This is why we live where we do.

It's the kind of place that makes me feel like anything is possible. As if every idea is waiting for me there hidden in the black sand, or carried by the sea gulls as they glide above us from the huge sand dunes to the enormous rock that sits on the edge of the water, guarding the entrance to the harbour. I was lying on the sand listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves on the beach and watching Paddy and the girls splashing in the shallows, when a novel idea came to me. That is, an idea for a novel. Which really only means one thing. That I have to hurry up and finish the one I started, so I can get on to the next one.

I was standing in the laundry at the beginning of this week putting a load of washing on. The Laundry is tacked on to the back of the house, with a separate entrance, and it's where we dump our dirty shoes and gumboots, rubbish bags waiting to go out, recycling, and anything else we need to keep out of the house. It's filthy. The corners of the windows are filled with spider webs and the window sills are littered with dead insects. I was looking down at the dried mud on the floor as I loaded in the clothes, and wondering when I was ever going to find the time to get in there and clean, when suddenly, completely out of nowhere, came a word, and I knew as soon as I thought it that it was my word for this year. Industry.

You see the other thing I've been doing this week, besides walking on wild beaches, is planning. Somehow I've got this year by the scruff of the neck, like a small dog with a large bone, and I'm not letting go. This year will conform to our requirements, we will wring it out like a wet towel, trample on it like a load of grapes in a barrel, eek out of it every bit of fruitfulness and success we possibly can. I'm going to take a day a week to sit in the office and make sure we do. I will be the managing juggler, doing my best to keep all our balls in the air.

So how will I write that novel in a year which will be as busy as a city? I'll tell you how. I will start every morning in the country. I will start every day at this desk, in the dark silence of dawn. How exactly I will manage this I'm not sure. Over Christmas it was impossible to get to bed as early as I wanted to. But I kept trying. Every day I've said to myself, I will go to bed early. And on the mornings where I haven't gone to bed early enough to get up and write, I've taken the dog and walked down to the beach while the sun is new and cool, and discovered that walking is almost as good as writing. But even when I haven't written or walked I've gone often to the little desk in the corner of my mind, the one where the words pile up like snowdrifts, where they come in without any one to stop them or any guard to keep them out, where they congregate in clumps and huddles, where they feel already written, even before they are.