During the last couple of months, I have been immersed in a virtual world of social media. Yesterday, my family insisted that I visited the real world of the Brecon Beacons.
Initially, I complained that it was another rainy day in Wales and it wasn’t worth braving a potential storm. I was happy to admire the colours of the garden, from my writing room, but the writing wasn’t flowing. Finally, I left my handbag at home, retrieved my walking gear and went to the Brecon Beacons. The beep, beep, beep of my phone was left behind as we drove into the heart of the impressive mountain range.
Always one to admire the cloudless blue sky, I was surprised by depth of the grey sky. I had been adamant that I needed the blue sky for some ‘blue sky thinking’, but I was wrong. I needed the reality of a dramatic landscape to chase away the writer’s block.
We stood in the landscape as the colours were dissolved by silver, grey and bronze tones. We discussed how the scene was changing before us, and how the moving clouds were like the curtains opening and closing on the stage. This very real experience made me aware that the weather re-writes the landscape in the same way that a writer changes the shades of meaning in a story.
Rather than staring at the computer screen for inspiration, or peering into the same garden – why not immerse yourself in the real world? It is good to hear the real tweets of the birds rather than the computer-generated tweets.
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