Spring, Baseball and the Sweet Spot (Patricia Potter)

This is a good day.

It's a beautiful day in Memphis: cerulean blue skies, a pleasant breeze and temperatures in the high 60's. There’s a special lilt in the songs sung by the many birds that inhabit my back yard and a new playfulness in the squirrels.

While I sometimes envy Suz’s and Lynn’s consistently beautiful weather and mild temperatures, I must say I love the change of seasons. I love spring with its tender green shoots and scent of new flowers. I love summer and its shimmering sun. My pool always awaits those hot days. I’m enchanted by the colors of fall and, with apologies to my snow-bound sisters, enjoy the cold winds – and very occasional snow – of winter.

But spring is special. It always signifies new beginnings, and I’m rooting on both Tara and Maggie. Changes are never easy, especially after many years, but I’m wishing both great joys.

I’m happy for other reasons as well.

One is baseball. Yes, I admit to being a baseball junkie. Didn’t used to be that way. Came to it rather late. When I lived in Atlanta, I would go to a game occasionally, but it never played an important part in my life. But the past three years are different. I’ve become a fanatic.

One reason is my mother. She’s in a nursing home, and I try to go over every night. We usually talk a while, then watch television together. She’s hard of hearing and her attention span isn’t that great so she doesn’t enjoy many programs. Swift moving dramas are incomprehensible to her. Talking heads are understandable, but she can tolerate only so many news and talk shows. But baseball . . . ah baseball.

She has always loved baseball.

So I'm delighted when baseball season starts because I know it's something she really enjoys watching. We watch every Atlanta Braves game, and I’ve become an expert on the game and players, and I’ve grown to enjoy it as much as she. I especially enjoy watching her enjoy it. At 97, she deserves these small pleasures.

The other really good thing this week: I’ve finally reached the "sweet spot" in my book.

I wrote a post in November about starting a new book and bringing you along on the journey with me. According to my plan, it should have been done by now and in the hands of my editors. Not so.

There’s many excuses, one being my mother who has gone through several crisises. It’s difficult to be creative when you’re worrying about someone all the time. But there’s been other missteps along the way. Probably the greatest roadblock has been my inability to immerse myself completely into the story. The characters sat back and left everything up to me. Not good.

That meant I depended on craft rather than instinct. That meant dragging myself up to the computer, dreading turning to the chapter because the magic just wasn’t there.

Then something wonderful finally happened this week. I hit that sweet spot. The time when the characters shoved me aside and told me they would take it from here. The synopsis flies out the window.

I think every writer hopes to hit that sweet spot sooner than later, but I’ll take it anytime I get it. Then I can go back and fill in. I know, finally, what is motivating the characters, what secrets they carry with them. Yes, I did have an idea in the beginning. I did the character studies that most of us do. I thought I knew them inside and out, But I didn’t. Not completely.

When characters take over, really take over, they assume other characteristics, other nuances that I never imagined. I just go along for the ride.

I sometimes go back and read a book I wrote eight or nine years earlier and can’t believe I actually wrote it. Probably because I didn’t. The characters did, and once they leave my head, they leave it forever. With few exceptions, I can’t remember the major characters and even plots of books I wrote just a few years earlier because the story didn't come from me. It came from the characters who have since fled from my mind, making way for the new people.

Now Kirke and Jake have finally taken over, and are falling in love, and I’m writing like a demon possessed.

Excuse me while I discover what surprises they have for me.