The house in Campulung, Romania
It’s been two weeks since we moved to Romania—half the time we planned to stay here. That’s a long time but also hardly any time at all, during which I’ve written three stories. Yes, three. And that’s not even counting those wallowing in their unfinished words by the wayside, still waiting for an ending.
It turns out that change inspires me in industrial quantities. A new home, a new view, a new culture—all these breathe words into me, turning me into a production line of fresh stories, essays, and anecdotes drawn from life or imagination. Some are tiny, some are moderately sized, and some are as long as the traffic jams on the Ayalon Freeway but flow as smoothly as the Jordan River. Maybe one of them will even grow into a full-length novel one day.
But the stories—what are they worth?
The story is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but the truth is, I’m rusty. Not long ago, I told my husband, “I’m rusty.”
“What are you saying?” he exclaimed. “You just need to exercise a bit more.”
“Not physically!” I replied. “I’m rusty. I write like a teenager experiencing their first creative writing workshop. Where is the writer I used to be? I read the things I’ve written, and they feel like a cheap knockoff of something I was trying to say.”
He thought momentarily, then asked, “When was the last time you wrote a story from beginning to end?”
I was struck silent.
“A story, a poem, a piece, a slogan—anything?”
A story written from start to finish...
That was in South Africa during the COVID pandemic, in a small town called Prince Albert. I had travelled to Cape Town for two weeks, but lockdowns stretched it into eight months. There, surrounded by breathtaking mountains and wrapped in a desert-mountainous landscape, I wrote a lot. One night, I had a dream—one of those long dreams that feel like a lifetime, so vivid you wake up in disbelief that none of it is real. For me, it was a whole period of life. I immediately made coffee and sat on the porch to write it all down. It was still fresh in my mind, so I sank back into it. I’m talking, of course, about Vandana.
Since then, life has thrown plenty of upheavals my way, mostly family-related. I kept writing, of course—I never stopped. I have a respectable collection of half-written stories, barren essays, and fragments with untapped potential. Most of them sit in the drawer of forgotten dreams, hoping one day to recover and see the light of day. And most of them, I haven’t revisited since they were written and abandoned. My main focus was my novel, which I completed. But since then, I haven’t produced anything new—a story that coalesces into something whole, that you can relish from beginning to end and finish with a sigh, or a tear, or a laugh.
So much time has passed since I wrote anything other than the novel. The narrator’s voice is so embedded in my head, and their world is still imprinted on mine. I feel distant from other things, disconnected, and… well, rusty. Strange, isn’t it?
But that’s not all. Here in Romania, I’ve found that since the atmosphere is so different and the quiet so absolute—especially because we intentionally chose to stay in the countryside rather than a city—I’ve rediscovered the ability to start my mornings without rushing into work. Instead, I sit with a cup of coffee by the fireplace, listening to the crackle of the wood, maybe reading a chapter or two of my book. Only then do I get to work, with a clear head.
Sometimes, I even start the day by writing, with my eyes still webbed from sleep and my mind pleasantly foggy.
So now, I need to learn again how not to write a novel. At least, until the next one.