Today, instead of messing around with a difficult part of my new work in progress, I went for a walk. I also let Cricket off the leash. She bounded through a tangle of branches into a tilled corn field and I followed, trying to step in places where I didn’t sink to my calves in mud. I pretty much failed, and she watched me slog from forty feet away while she devoured the rotting remains of somebody’s Halloween pumpkin.

I used to own a dog that came when called and I was angry that I had let nostalgia interfere with the common sense I should employ on a naughty new puppy. One of my shoes was sucked off and instead of putting it back on my foot I pried it from the deep and threw it. Cricket came tearing towards me, grabbed it and ran back to a point slightly further into the field than she had been before. She began to eat the shoe.

I thought about just hopping home and climbing back into bed. This didn’t seem to be a day for authorship or dog walking. Maybe Cricket would get lonely and follow me. Maybe the farmer who owned the field would adopt her and give her a better life than I could. The problem with the plan of just abandoning her though, was that I was already a mile and a half down the trail, a pretty long distance to go on one foot, especially in the middle of November. I flailed further forward in the mud and made it to the pumpkin.

Cricket was interested in why I wasn’t coming after the shoe. She raised her head and sniffed the air. I pretended that I was really glad to have scored something better out there in the middle of the cornfield.

“Yum, rotten pumpkin,” I said out loud.

Her ears sprang up.

“Delicious,” I added.

She inched forward.  After another minute, she had slunk close enough to the pumpkin that I was able to snag her collar and my shoe. I almost lost both raising my arms in victory.

Later, when I returned to the computer, I came to the Zen conclusion that it was okay to be optimistic once in a while, but I shouldn’t be greedy and I should know a good thing when I see it. Writer’s sometimes need profound thinking to get them through rough spots, that’s why I take walks.

Meanwhile, Cricket stared longingly at my feet.

About The Author

J. T. Dutton was raised on a horse farm in Northwest Connecticut until attending Skidmore College. After receiving a BA in English and spending a little time not knowing what she wanted to do with her life, she later attended the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She received an MFA in Fiction and wrote the first drafts of Freaked. I really enjoy writing YA because teens are so potential as characters--they are all about transformation. They feel "young" but seek "age" and they, by nature, think outside the box. I may have an adult novel in me somewhere, but for now, this is what I do.  Read more about J. T. Dutton.

Related posts:

1. Connect with J. T. Dutton: How to Write a Literary Novel
2. Connect with Leigh Brescia: The Importance of Being . . . Flexible
3. Connect With JT (Jen) Dutton: Talking about a Revolution
4. Connect with J.T. (Jen) Dutton: Reading on the Edge
5. FREAKED by J. T. Dutton