March 14 2025
Dear all,
It’s a beautiful spring morning in Key West and I’m back in my studio to pay attention to my latest novel, that has been languishing here for at least a month. It’s a relief, to be back writing fiction – to re-enter that imaginary world that has consoled me for most of my life when the going has been hard. Talking with other writers, I hear them saying the same thing: it’s hard to focus when the world seems to be falling apart – or being taken apart – around you. But it’s essential. It is who we are. Words matter, truth matters, imagination matters. Language matters. The worlds we imagine have a chance of coming into being, and if we fail them, they will never exist in the imaginations of others, our readers, and in the actual world we inhabit.
I’m reading the words of many others online: historians, philosophers, activists, people with integrity and an eye for truth and falsehood. They often hold me up when I falter, and remind me of what matters. Beauty matters. The natural world matters. We matter to each other. And human relationships, the stuff of novels, matter a great deal.
A friend sitting next to me last night at a showing of the film “Cinema Paradiso” said, “It matters so much to find things to enjoy at this time” – and we agreed, laughing and even crying during the film. It’s a time to develop our human capacities even further in this direction, perhaps, and be all the things that Artificial Intelligence cannot. Compassionate, empathetic, friendly, ironic even, keeping a sense of humor. Laughing is not something that robots, or tyrants, do.
Home to have lunch, some broccoli soup I made yesterday. Small pleasures count. The sky is blue, the mango blossom is out, the beaches are full of student spring-breakers and the ocean is at the end of every street.
I’m sending out messages about the writing retreat I’m leading at the Flores Retreat Centre, in June, as the deadline for application is mid-April. So if anyone out there is thinking about coming to join me, now is the time to apply. And perhaps the time for a real regeneration of our spirits? Join me if you can.
Affectionately, Ros