Gosh, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I’ve been having a long period of writer’s block–over a year long now–but I think there are signs of that beginning to ease now, and I hope you may see me more often from now on.
What have I been doing instead of writing? Oh dude! I’ve been completely rejigging my life in order to use less plastic and less energy, to ditch a car and begin to grow some of my own food. I may have mentioned that I had gotten into solarpunk, with its message that there is rational hope for the future of the planet, and that lead to a serious shift in my priorities and lifestyle.
Then I learned about permaculture and restoration agriculture, and the possibility of drawing down some of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by means of improving the soil… And suddenly I was gardening.
So yeah, it’s been an interesting year. My garden is evolving into a mini food forest and my house is becoming an earth ship.
When I look back on the Cygnus 5 series and see that I was already fascinated with the idea of terraforming, and conforming oneself to the needs of the planet instead of shaping the planet to fit you, I realize that maybe this isn’t such a departure after all. I’m just doing small things to live the dream.
I’m currently writing a non-fiction ‘How to’ guide to put down everything I learned over the last year and a half–so that other people can use it to eco-friendly their own lives without the trial and error I went through. I may end up doing a few blog posts about that, because heck, being all solarpunk is part of my deal now.
But the garden is now producing food, my soil is deep, my earthworms are happy, and my lifestyle is more or less zero waste. So there’s space into which writing can flow back.
And flowing back it is. Today I was hit with the thought that I could write at least one more Cygnus 5 book. I’d like to visit them on the colony and see how they’re doing now that so many of them are no longer standard human. And oh boy am I much more qualified to write about terraforming now!