“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”

— Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), “The Waves”

Recently we had a rain storm during a warm eighty degree afternoon. I was stressed, so I went outside with my tea and watched, smelled, and listened to the rain. I just existed. I meditated. I slowed the world down. And as inevitably happened, plotting crept into my head. Not all consuming such that it threw me out of my meditation, but just hovering. And in that moment, I thought of details that could make the story better. The smell of meat on a grill. The tickle of sweat. The small shock of everyone looking at you at once. The taste of ginger ale.

Take the time to just be. You'll see what you're missing in moving through life too fast. And it makes your writing better.