Dr Sharon Blackie: writer, psychologist, mythologist
It’s just two weeks now until The Enchanted Life is officially published. In some ways, it seems like an age has passed since I handed the final manuscript over to my editor at the beginning of October; in other ways it seems all too recent, as I find myself some days still in the throes of what my husband calls ‘post-book traumatic stress disorder’.
Yes, there’s some overlap in these recent posts; after all, I’m making it up as I go along. Each early morning with a notebook brings a new set of reflections to add to the soup. Dream-makers, memory-keepers, storytellers – in a sense, they’re all part of the same thing. But they each have different gifts, and each of those gifts is critical at this time in its own unique way.
Well, we’re back to caves again. You can’t get too much cave, at midwinter. At this time of year I feel very bear-like, drawn to the warm darkness of my dreaming-cave. It’s a time for dreaming, for sure. For me, this year is a time for dreaming up new stories, letting the voices dream their way into me. It’s a bit of a hibernatory time, curling up in bed for an hour before sleeping with a book that makes me dream of better worlds. It’s a time for incubating dreams of all kinds.