Fall harvest in Teyssieres - With Enthusiasm!

My writing room from afar. At the bottom of this valley in an ancient hameau.

The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things, wrote Louis Pasteur. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language––the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and obeys it."

"Harvest" is the ending blog for this summer in Teyssieres. Working under the sun and evening stars, The Drummer's Widow grew into 116,297 words. As I did with In Pursuit... I'll bring my harvest back to America to sell in the marketplace. I hope it has better luck than Katherine did, but I mustn't let that discourage me.

I believe the enthusiasm of nature is the source of my own. In a sliver of Brazilian forest only a few miles square, scientists have counted more than 1,500 species of butterfly. And the poppy when coupled with another poppy and given seven years and the right conditions will produce 820 thousand million million million descendants. That’s enthusiasm!!!

And what I need to do right now is complete the third draft come Spring. So from now on my blog will be about the writing life. Well, not entirely. A big change is coming. We are pulling up our Manhattan roots, deeply grown for thirty years and moving out of New York. That move will take a lot of enthusiasm, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time.

If you would like to learn more about enthusiasm I recommend "Exuberance: The Passion for Life" by Kay Redfield Jamison from whence the quote above came from.