Category: Uncategorized

Or at least on the last few days of it.

On Sunday, we dropped our son at the drop-off point for his two weeks of sleepaway-somewhere-in-the-Sierras-(we-think)-camp. And then we took off for our own trip. A few months ago, my husband had suggested a few days in the gold country–which is Californian for the cute little towns in the foothills of the Sierras, originally populated by gold-prospecting miners. I love this area–I had a great-aunt who lived here for years, and it’s the closest geographical location that gets some sort of season–leaves change color in the fall, it gets pretty warm most summers, and that same great-aunt put her back out at 90 when she decided to shovel the winter snow out of her driveway. I haven’t been there for years, though, and my husband’s suggestion sounded like the perfect trip.

And it was. Here are a few of the things we did.

1. We stayed here, at The Outside Inn, a restored motor inn at the top of the hill that is downtown Nevada City. This is our room.

Yes, those are glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. I can’t recommend this motel enough, if you’re ever visiting this area. It was seriously inexpensive, spotlessly clean and wonderfully quiet, had Adirondack chairs in a lovely little garden space, and a bowl of jelly bellies in the office. Plus, they leave chocolates in your room, but good things like mini Snickers and Milky Way bars, not those skinny little mints on your pillow!

2. We hiked. The first day there, we went DOWNhill almost to a river (husband went all the way down, but my knees said, “Wait here,” and I listen to my knees) and then back up. I sat for close to an hour at this beautiful spot just at the edge of the path, with no poison oak and no mosquitos, looking out at the river and up at the cliff and watching butterflies play in the breeze. I had my book, but I barely opened it; it felt so good just to rest. The third day, we drove partway down a dirt road toward a trailhead, but after getting stuck once in the snow (yes!), we parked the car and just walked the rest of the way in, had lunch, sat some more, and walked out again. Walked may be the wrong description, since mostly I schlurshed–which is my word for what my nice, thick hiking boots do on big patches of snow and ice. This was our lunch view.

3. Ate. And ate. And ate. Nevada City is a small town, maybe three blocks long, with sort of one and a half main streets. We didn’t make it into every restaurant, but we did make a nice big dent in the eating establishments. My husband and I don’t always agree, but our consensus was that the very best of the great meals we had was at Lefty’s Grill. What’d we eat? Crab & Shrimp Cake Louis; Pear, Balsamic, Gorgonzola Pizza on Flat Bread; and Bourban Pecan Pie. Triple-nom.

4. Wrote. Kind of. I have a sort-of-in-the-drawer novel that I know I can’t and shouldn’t work on right now, but that I’m not ready to let go of completely. And I had a critique from a very helpful set of fresh eyes that I hadn’t been able to spend any time with. So on the morning that husband went off for his first mountain bike ride, I took the manuscript and the critique and a notebook to the coffeehouse, and I read and I thought and I scribbled notes. And there is hope. I’ve read it out here so many times–the idea that there’s a time to put a book away for a while and a benefit from doing so, and whoever all has told me this, you’re right. No perfect solutions yet, but ideas and ideas and ideas. And some insight to the most important questions that either I thought I had answered, or that I had over-optimistically swept under the writing carpet. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, or when, but it will be somewhere. Meanwhile, I’ll put some more hours into reading and thinking & try to write myself a pretty strong, directed revision letter. For future use. 🙂

5. Relaxed. The older novel was the only writing I took. July is going to be a busy month with several have-to projects and continued progress on my current WIPs. I needed those few days with nothing that had to be done, nothing that carried even a whiff of schedule or deadline or pressure. I read two books–but slowly and in small pieces, and I sat with my eyes closed, and I lay down, and I napped.

Pretty much what vacation should be about, as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, this one may get a bit weird, because it’s so tricky to describe the way our brains react to things, including words. I may be getting a bit into synesthesia here, or some third cousin of it, or I may just be failing to explain quite how stories resonate in my mind. Maybe none of you will have a clue what I’m talking about; on the other hand, maybe I’m writing about something common to many writers.

Read on to find out!

I started reading early, and when I add things up, I have now been reading for close to 4.5 decades. That’s a lot of books. I started writing probably less than ten years after the reading and, with a few years of gap that I wish weren’t there, have been writing since. That’s a lot of words, even if so very many of them never ended up a complete book or story. When I look back at the things I’ve read and the things I’ve written, they all have a taste.

Not a taste with actual flavors, but a distinct feel–like walking down the street and seeing someone at a distance and just knowing–from the rhythm of their walk or the way they carry their shoulders–who it is. The young mysteries of Phyllis Whitney, the ones I fell in love with at about 12, have a lightness, because–I think–that’s what I felt every time I opened one…the lightness of recognition, of finding myself in her characters. Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazon books have a speed to them, a rushing of wind and salt air, that came with following adventures like none I’d ever taken and none I could ever imagine myself being brave enough, independent enough to take. (That “taste” came back the day I found myself in England, alone, hiking over the same hills Ransome had written about.) Wuthering Heights is dense layers of chocolate–some mellow, some incredibly dark–and a few threads of intense cherry brandy running through it all.

The taste thing goes for my own writing. My MG mystery has a flavor of fun, at least for me–cartwheels and unicycles and cotton candy. The picture book I’m working on feels just a little like a jig, or a game of hopscotch, with a plate of peanut-butter-and-jelly crackers. And my YA is darkening shadows, twisting alleys, and the bitter dregs of a nearly empty, too-cold cup of tea.

At least, these are what I’m trying to cook up. The taste of the books I’ve read stay the same for me, with slight variations as I reread them again at different ages. The flavor of the books I’m writing is part of my vision–a taste that came to me with the original idea, and the thing  I want readers to walk away with, to carry with them when they close the cover and put the book back on the shelf.

There is no cotton candy in my mystery, no peanut-butter in my picture book, and I don’t really even know if the characters in my YA drink tea or coffee. When I close my eyes, though, and think–not of the actual words and sentences, not of the plot or the character development, but maybe, yes, a little bit about the voice–these are the flavors I look for again. I use them as a touchstone, a reminder of the feelings I want people to experience when they read my stories, to carry with them when they’ve finished the books. These are the “tastes” toward which I write.

What about you? Anyone out there have a better label than taste for that feeling each book carries, even before you can find it in the written words?

Okay, we’re a week into summer, and our vacation pattern is settling in. Much faster this year than others–maybe because my son’s older, maybe because I have deadline work to do–which does keep me much more focused, maybe because son leaves in another week for sleep-away camp in the sierras–and the shopping/prep is giving a bit of structure to our days. Not sure, but enjoying it. I may actually be relaxing into this mom/writer thing, after only 14 years!

Here are five ways I know it’s summer vacation, 2010:

1. We ended up at Target yesterday, at the only rack of long-sleeved shirts in the men’s department, and were seriously grateful that a) son liked them, b) they are light & comfortable for taking to camp, c)they don’t have any obnoxious or supposedly-cool logos on the front, and 3) they had two colors available in his size. What are you supposed to do–shop for summer camp in January? 🙂

2. I don’t see my son until, oh…9 or 10 in the morning. I think he’s actually waking up earlier than that–thanks to Mom and Dad not being too quiet as they get started and thanks to Bard the cockatiel for whistling excitedly on his swing after we uncover him. (You just cannot make a bird keep to a teenager’s summer schedule.) And when he does get up, there’s no schedule to get moving or get out the door–he pretty much does his own thing. What this means for me is that I can have a leisurely cup of tea and get caught up online before breakfast, then settle in to work for a serious few hours. Lovely. I do not miss getting in the car and heading down the hill to school.

3. I’m shutting down out of work-mode earlier. During the school year, I always feel like there’s something more I need to be doing at the end of the day. I actually don’t think that’s because I have more to get done, or because I accomplish less during the day. I think it’s that chopped up feeling of interrupting work, coming and going, shifting focus between too many things. Somehow, this summer is feeling more about stages of completion and knowing that, when I’ve reached certain milestones, it’s okay (even good) for me to just stop and wait for the next day to get going again. Boy, if I could bottle this feeling and use it all year…

4. The doors and windows of the house are open. Yes, sometimes, we get there in May, but not this year. And even with summer officially almost here, I’m still wearing socks on  my feet and even a sweater some mornings. But it’s warm enough that we’ve got the doors to the back porch open many hours of the day, and the window in my office, and I can hear the birds and smell the trees.

5. Iced tea. I’m taking some of my tea doses cold these days, thank you very much. Iced tea in California is not nearly the big deal it is in the south–there is NOTHING better than a glass of strong, “sweet tea.” Unless it’s a glass of that alongside a huge plate of fried chicken. Anyway…we can’t really get that out here, but I am simulating it as well as I can after in the afternoon, often after I get my exercise in and just want something half-bitter, half-sweet poured over a PILE of ice cubes.

What rituals, patterns mean summer vacation to you? What are you enjoying about June right now?

Today starts one of those weekends that will be lots of fun and just a bit–okay, what’s NEXT on the calendar. My son’s graduating 8th grade and, on the other side of our hill, friends are getting married. My husband is best man, so he’ll be racing back and forth a bit over that hill between rehearsal and graduation and rehearsal dinner, and I’ll be playing chauffeur to my son as needed, with a little bit of hill-racing myself.

Do I have a morning free, in which I could write? Sure. Will I have the clear head and focus to figure out what’s happening in the next scene, step off our hill and back into 1913 Chicago? Uh…no. So, instead, here’s some of what I’ll be doing today.

1. Stopping at the grocery store to pick up snacks for son’s Saturday night sleepover after the graduation and after the wedding.

2. Getting on the treadmill with a good book. For as long as I need.

3. Cleaning my office, the mess in which is threatening to spill into the rest of the house and possibly….THE WORLD!!!!!

4. Picking son up early from school so he can change into those nicer graduation clothes, including quite the spiffy tie.

5. Standing in the quad back at his middle-school, watching  in amazed awe at the young man he has become in the past three years.

Happy weekend, everybody!