Treasure Coast Shelling and Writing

Everyone has some sort of routine. I get up early--around dawn, regardless of how late I stay up. Fortified by two cups of black coffee, I hit the beach. The best days are when the tide is low or falling, and after a storm. The shoreline is smooth, hard, wet--easy to walk miles on. Treasures come in on the waves--multicolored pieces of sea glass aged to buffed and rounded, shells that started life on the coast of South America, even the occasional giant sea bean. On days when the ocean is stingy, and serves up nothing, there is still the steady roar of the Atlantic, the flights of pelicans in formation like B-52 bombers, the sandpipers on stick legs somehow not getting swept to sea while they peck at the outgoing tide for tiny marine life. Those days, when there's not chance of distraction from a twinkling profusion of shells and stones, I walk the shoreline twigging out plots, fleshing out characters, and trying out dialogue on the gulls. For now, the shells.