Catching the first train from Nottingham to London, on the way back to Ottawa.
I had a brilliant time in Nottingham, both at the Bold Strokes Books three-day writing retreat (of which I only blogged two days), the free day on Friday where Cari Hunter decided to show me how to live dangerously in the Peak District (another blog pending), and the two-day 9th Annual Bold Strokes Books UK Festival, which was freaking amazing (and that’d be another blog pending).
But right now? Right now, the jet-lag is kicking my butt. I can feel the creative battery buzzing with a full charge, even as my social battery is blinking dangerously low alert messages into my forebrain in Comic Sans (no, really, that’s how bad it is). There’s a kind of white-noise in my head, and I just want to sit, and ponder, and take a breath before I dive back in to writing, reading, and all the other pieces in motion that make up publishing.
I’ve walked the dog, done the laundry, and had so much tea.
So, I’m going to listen to the white noise, as it were, and the low-battery warnings, and tell myself it’s okay to step back from such an amazing experience and take a day or two to let it settle.
But I will say this: being surrounded by queer authors, in a queer setting, is—despite my physical, jet-lagged state—so revitalizing. On the train-trips and plane flight home, I scribbled down so many ideas, and I think I’ve finally untangled the knot that was keeping me stymied for Triad Magic, as well as some issues I was having with “Faux-Ho-Ho.” Bold Strokes does an amazing job of making everything feel so much like a group, family effort. For a process that is so very often done alone, it’s not one that ever feels lonely, and the sense of support lingers.
Even with a five hour time change.
'Nathan Burgoine 