I was talking to my mom a while ago about tennis (my favourite) and golf (hers). The games have one similarity: they involve getting intensely frustrated with a small, round, inanimate object.

“But I always try to remember that I’m paying for the privilege of chasing a little white ball around a field,” Mom told me.

She’s quite clever, my mom.

Since I choose to play tennis, there’s no sense throwing my racquet at the net. (I only do that in my imagination, even at the worst of times.) Likewise, I choose to write, so there’s no sense tearing up my notebook or tearing out my hair.

I wouldn’t say this has been the easiest writing season ever. It seems like approximately a hundred years since I was last alone in the house. The world outside is on fire. It’s hard to write a scene about a group of middle-grade students cheating on a math test, and believe the scene has any purpose or worth.

I’ve taken to carrying my notebook, my coffee, and a blanket to the far corner of the back deck and closing the door behind me. If I’m lucky, no one finds me for twenty minutes or so. Then I mutter the words “choice” and “privilege” and try to fill a page or two.