Rawe-struck

Summer, A Platform

It’s been three months since my last post. In the past I’ve had seasons when my writing crop goes fallow, so to speak, and I’ve always returned to the business of farming words with heavy regret over how much time I’ve wasted. This time I’m trying to recite a different story — one of acceptance, possibly even celebration. Possibly.

For the past three months I squeezed the juice out of summer with my daughter. We swam, biked, baked, argued, snuggled, and wrestled with boredom. We travelled to make-believe places and real ones. We visited friends who are like family in Maine and dared one another to leap off the “jumping rock” into the lake. We reminded one another to say no when our instincts said not this high. We studied cobwebs and snails and moss, and I grew tired of cleaning muddy footprints tracked in the hallway. We butted heads, wiped tears from our eyes, and mopped sweat from our foreheads. It was mundane and wondrous and everything in between. At the end of the summer, we laid in the grass and said Phew, that was fun. I love you so, so much.

As a writer, I’m supposed to be “building my platform” — slinging my work into the world in hopes that fellow readers will chose to follow me so that someday a book publisher will have proof that I have something other people would be willing to hear. But to be honest, I wrestle with that. When I post something, anything, my hope is more that my little bit of the journey will resonate with someone else — that maybe one other soul out there will feel Yeah! Me too. Keeping track of the statistics about how many “followers” I have and which posts generate the most hits leaves me feeling hollow.

So this time, for the first time, I declare that I will not trade this summer of joy for the stench of shame over what I didn’t accomplish. I’ll focus on the platform that I did build . . . the one for my daughter, the one that’s brimming with memories of a childhood summer well-savored.

— Amy Rawe