Writing as Shoveling

Five-Minute Friday writing fun-ercise from Lisa-Jo Baker 

Prompt: write

Today is a snow day, a beautiful, white, quiet, work from home, snow day. While cozied up under a blanket, working away, and drinking cup after cup of tea. I could hear a neighbor shoveling and my heart was saddened that someone would want to do away with the snow, blemish it, and toss it aside. Looking out the side window of my front door I saw my neighbor Bob, not only shoveling his driveway but our whole alley way. My annoyance at his dislike of the snow was melted by his generous heart to serve all of us in the building. An hour later I decided to go for a walk, to get fresh air and enjoy the snow first hand. Bob was still out there shoveling. We chatted and I teased him that he was fighting a losing battle; the area where he had started was already blanketed with fresh snow. He knew that it would need to be done again in the morning, but that it would be easier than doing it all at once. And it struck me that writing isn’t so very different than shoveling snow. Sometimes it needs to be broken down into manageable tasks, just when you think an area is done you need to go back and do it again covering the same ground again and again, that it can often be an act of service to others, but also, sometimes, it can wait until morning.