mid-air © Lilly Schwartz 2012

Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/320

Between superhero movies and Science Fiction novels I have come to realise that I must be on holiday.

Two years ago I took a holiday of half a year in Spain and spent several months on the beach. I forced myself not to do much apart from learning Spanish and reading novels. The decision was mainly health related and since then work has forced its way back into my life, although I learned something crucial during that summer. I learned that it’s necessary to relax every now and then, and that it’s necessary to stop worrying.

Well, how do you do that though if you don’t have a 9 to 5 job and always spend your time striving for something? How do you stop worrying and just take a break? I find it rather difficult to be honest and even while I sort of feel like I’m on a holiday, I still do my drawing exercises, write for my blog and take pictures. In fact even behind reading Science Fiction there is some buried wish to understand something about the genre of Science Fiction in particular as well as about story-telling and make-belief in general.

My novel has been sitting “in a drawer” (no actual drawer involved) to “mature”. You know, like a cheese. I want to look at it with different eyes when editing, so I have to bring some distance between me and the story. Other people write on different projects during such times, but all projects I had to work on where in some sense related. They would have kept me too close to the novel. In fact I have even gone out of my way to sever the ties between me and the mind-set the novel was written in, just to see whether it holds up with a different outlook. I’m not sure yet when exactly I will start editing, but it’s going to happen over the next few months.

The picture reminds me of how I feel at the moment. I feel suspended in mid-air, between things, not sure whether I will land just right or stumble, the ground slipping away beneath my feet. Maybe that’s just fine, and I should trust that things will turn out right, but it is scary at times.

Well, and that’s my cue; it’s time to relax and stop worrying. It’s probably just the right time to have a holiday now, before I get back into the swing of things.