Santorini or One Hundred Pages In

I took this picture three summers ago, on my first trip to the Greek island of Santorini.  As pictures go, it isn't all that artful; taken long before I had Instagram, it doesn't employ a nifty filter or an intriguingly-placed focal point.  But it does capture something of the electric blue of the sea, the crisp, sun-drenched white of the buildings, the dizzying black volcanic cliffs. And it almost captures the heat, the sea breeze, the scent of jasmine, the jingling and clip-clopping of the mule trains carrying tourists down to the old port and back again.

Yesterday I hit a milestone: I reached the hundredth page of my novel-in-progress. For one hundred pages now I've been living with this particular landscape made up of equal parts memory and imagination.  By this point, I've begun to see how the story could unfold, how the plot points could fit together.  I've begun to get caught up in the characters, to care about them, to get a sense of how they feel about each other.  There's so much left to be written...and rewritten.  But the project is starting to feel real to me.  As summer draws to a close, it's starting to feel like it could actually happen.