All My Todays.

Today I was up bright and early to make the most of the day! I am grateful that, even in my late fifties, I continue to be blessed with high energy levels, and the liveliness and stamina you need to be a writer.

This year already feels as if it will be very productive - I have written and completed three more children's books!

Why have I called this post "All My Todays?"

Well, the reason is that, as a writer, I practise summoning up the past in my mind's eye, as if it were today. I also practise empathetic understanding. Point of view allows me to see things as if I were the child of many years ago. I can also see things through a rich kaleidoscope of different characters' viewpoints.

I also revisit the past through the retrospective "wisdom" of a benign adult author's insights, who reveals herself occasionally as the storyteller/narrator in my children's books.

I enjoy writing because it allows me to experience the past again as if it were today. I like to embrace the traditions of the past in my writing but still make my characters fresh, contemporary, vibrant and part of the "nowness" of our lives.

When you are a writer, the voices in your head - some of them based on people you met along your journey, who may no longer be "present" in the usual sense, live on and are immortalized forever in your memories, and your writing.

You experience them as if they are there with you, having tea, engaging in conversation, laughing with you at some shared joke, whispering secrets in your ear, conspiring with you, arguing with you, crying with you, sharing with you.

You can see their faces in close-up, remember their idiosyncrasies - how they had pet words, and favorite sayings. You hear again the timbre of their voices, recall gestures they made, how they walked, and so on. You remember and try to overlook their faults or at least be kind if you love them. They keep company with all the interesting people you know now, as if the past and the present were one big room, and people in that room or book held a conversation with one another.

You revisit the places of the past, which are characters as well. You experience again the sights, sounds and smells of a place, as if you are actually there. In your mind's eye, you see, in close-up, the details of a stone wall, a tree, a house. You see the panorama of a vista in the distance.

In the nowness of living, you are aware that changes have happened, and see things afresh. But the soul of a place makes it like no other so that it leaves an indelible impression: it is timeless and memorable.

The exciting thing about integrating the essence and spirit of the past with the nowness of the contemporary is that being an author is a kind of time travel and alchemy where the journey - the process of writing - conjures with time itself, and blurs boundaries between reality and fantasy. All my todays have this magic, as yours will have, too, when you read my books to your children.