On Smells and Summer Writing

I thought I would post an update on my summer writing activities. I have essentially decided to not start working on my spy novel or any novel for that matter this summer. I have decided that I want to focus on my short pieces of prose that are centered around smells.

First, if I was going to work on a novel in earnest this summer then I should have started pretty soon after my break started at the beginning of May and now here we are, basically the middle of June. I realize that I am just continuing to procrastinate on getting back to a novel that I have started and when I eventually do get back to it, will again have to spend time rereading everything I have already written. But like I said, for this summer it is too late, and also we are going on a four-week overseas trip from mid-July to mid-August (which I will post about in the future). So, as you can see and what I have convinced myself is that there is not enough time to believe that I can make meaningful progress on a project like a novel this summer before the start of the semester in August.

Second, and the biggest reason for my decision to focus on my works of prose about smells is because at this time, I feel more connected to these writings and exploring my ideas and thoughts around smells at a deep emotional, spiritual, and even physical level. I realize that you may start to wonder what I am tripping on or something, so let me explain a bit about where I am now.

I have posted I believe three pieces now on this blog about three different smells: the beach, coffee, and lavender. For me, my sense of smell has always been strong and I believe that over time I have associated certain smells with specific emotions as well as some specific phsyical reactions too. With this being said, I want to write about and describe how I see, hear, taste, and feel smell. For example, let's' say I want to describe the smell of walking through a field of mint; what colors does that smell make me see, what sounds does it make me hear, what tastes do I have in my mouth, what feelings are in my heart?

This has taken me on a journey of writing about smells, both good and bad ones, in trying to explain what they mean to me at an intimate level and often times feel almost raw. Raw in the sense that I am trying to express my ideas in a way that is strong, but in essence laying my soul bare for the reader to see. I feel like some of my pieces are light and even a bit funny, others are a bit more solemn and melancholy in feeling, while others still may conjure up very physical images that are sensual and spiritual at the same time.

I do not want to make it sound like I am some new age spiritualist or anything like that because I am not. Without going into it too much, I do believe in God and my faith is important to me, but I believe that these short pieces that I am writing show how even people of faith can wrestle with thier own questions from time to time on their personal faith journey.

I think the main thing that I would want people to take away from my pieces on different smells is the realization that all of our senses are connected and not distinct from one another. So even if the reader does not have a sprig of lavender to their nose as they read my piece, they should still be able to have that smell in their brains along with the colors and feelings associated with it. They might have their own associations and that is all fine and dandy, but I want to offer something new and fresh to help them experience that smell. And maybe they will gain a deeper sense of that smell.

For example, being able to sense the smell of Chamomile flowers in your brain without having them in front of your nose, and it being intensified by the colors and objects you associate with the smell, and experiencing the feelings you associate with it too. For me, I often do this when I go to bed at night because the smell of Chamomile in my brain immediately makes me relaxed and sleepy!

I realize that this post might be a bit hard to follow or grasp my ideas and some of that is because I am still working out for myself how to explain my thoughts and feelings about what I am working on with these writings about smells. I thought about just posting them all here, but I am not sure how that would work one day if I wanted to consider them to be published. I almost want to get a graphic desinger to use what I have wrote and have each page be the color that matches the smell and play around with different images and such and it would be like this really cool artsy looking book full of deep thoughts that you always find yourself going back to over and over again.

But right now, I only have 16 pieces of prose written and hope by August when the semester starts to have somewhere between 30-40 finished at least. I'll keep you updated and maybe I will share one or two along the way!