#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

My walk waits until afternoon when we have an unexpected final trip to our favorite beach, Grande plage des Salines, for a swim. It's an hour drive from our villa in Le Robert, but we can't resist. After a long swim in mild surf I walk the length of the beach in both directions. Then, while we sit reading, I hear the friendly tinkle of the ice cream vendor's bell. Hand churned with fresh coconut, she serves ice cold fresh scoops of her delicious treat into plastic cups we spoon quickly into our mouths under the hot sun.

This morning I worked on an essay I started a week or so before coming here, and this is the first time I've looked at it since, and so, of course, I procrastinate and find, first, many silly reasons to avoid looking at it. Only the usual fears:

1. I will hate it now and wonder why I started it;

2. I'll decide it's not worth finishing and then I'll have to start something brand new;

3. I won't be able to connect with it emotionally anymore – the inspiration, the moment of relevance, will have passed.

Still, I have a deadline to face as I return to my Monday night critique group and do not want to show up empty handed. So, finally, I look.

I read to the point where I left off and it's fine. I'm drawn in. The spark of my interest remains. I see what I was doing, and how I can reconnect, because I have left plenty of notes, an outline, right there where I left off. . . and I pick up threads, and sit outdoors in the shade and keep going with this essay – about teen sex and love and lies and birth control, and pregnancies in and out of wedlock and miscarriages and abortions and babies. . . this is good news. I want to finish it; I want to find out what it's all about and why I am writing such a personal, honest piece about all this now.

Last day at the beach

Coconut palms: Grande plage des Salines, Sainte Anne, Martinique

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2018