Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 38

My NaNoWriMo Game

I would find it hard to believe that I have a reader who hasn’t heard of NaNoWriMo, but just in case, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November, a few hundred thousand people set out to write a 50,000 word novel. There are meet-ups and pep talks and social events, word count trackers and message boards, and rumor has it that at least 9 New York Times best-sellers got their start as a NaNo project, The Night Circus, Water for Elephants, and Fangirl among them.

Every November when I set out to join the NaNo crowd, I… freeze. I immediately lose all ability to write a coherent sentence and all inclination to sit at my keyboard. I did manage to write 50,000 words one year, but mostly it was journal-style writing about my inability to write. It was definitely not fiction. The last couple years I haven’t even bothered to try, because I had better things to do than sit around hating myself. Feeling like a failure is not my favorite life experience.

But this year, I’m going to try again. Not because I like sitting around hating myself, but because I need to break through my self-editing obsession. I’ve been working on Fen, but I haven’t even made it out of the first chapter yet. It’s not how I want to write.

I wrote A Lonely Magic in a mad gush of writing joy — I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I wrote the first draft in six weeks, constantly lunging to my keyboard for just a few more lines. I remember getting up in the middle of dinner with promises to be right back, because I just had to get the perfect sentence down before I forgot it. It was completely fun. I want that again. And I’m thinking that NaNo might be a way to find it although obviously, not the way I’ve done it in the past, because that didn’t work.

So here’s the new plan: I’m going to start with a project that has lots of scope for imaginative craziness. Right now the three options are 1) an inter-galactic adventure about a museum of mysterious artifacts, with a magic heroine; 2) a post-apocalyptic magical world with a reluctant adventurer heroine; 3) Fen without worrying about continuity, logic, world-building or characterization, just writing as fast and as fun as I can. Today, I’m leaning toward the first of those options, but I’ll make the decision on Thursday.

Meanwhile, here’s the game. Every time I get stuck, I’m going to set a timer. If I hit ten minutes on the timer without managing to make any progress, I’m going to roll a 20-sided die. (Unless an actual die comes my way in the next few days, I’ll use a online dice-roll generator.) I will then write according to the below instructions.

1) Switch the point-of-view to another character

2) Write an unexpected sound and the characters’ reactions to it. How does it change the scene?

3) How can the POV character say “yes, and…”? Write that.

4) Immediately make the challenge facing the POV character more difficult. (The challenge can either be the overall story challenge or something in the current scene.)

5) Write an Aha! moment for any character, a moment of discovery or inspiration, within the current scene.

6) Some detail of a character’s past is important in how they’re perceiving the current situation: fill in the details.

7) What does the POV character believe a non-POV character thinks/feels/believes in this moment, and how are they reading it/perceiving it? (Body language, voice, actions?). Write it.

8) Give the POV character a reason to laugh. (What might make the POV character laugh in the current moment?)

9) The POV character smells something: what is it and what does it mean to her?

10) An object in the setting matters: what is it, what does it look like, how did it get there, why is it important?

11) Reveal a clue to someone’s secret without giving the secret away. Might require giving your characters some secrets.

12) An animal enters the scene. Plot bunny!

13) Add a physical detail (or two or three) to make the setting more vivid.

14) A character has a question: what is it?

15) Delete the last three paragraphs and take the story in a different direction.

16) Write one line to end the scene, add a break, start again in a new setting/time.

17) Give the character a physical want or need — hunger, sore feet, thirst, need to pee, aches and pains, oncoming cold, allergies, tired, etc. — and help them resolve it.

18) Go to chaoticshiny.com and use a random generator to create something story-appropriate and add it to the story. (A monster, an artifact, a character, a setting… whatever would help with the stuck-ness.)

19) Ninjas hop out of the closet — probably not literal ones. But write something that forces your characters to move. Bonus point if the movement includes a fight.

20) Go eat some chocolate. If necessary, go to the store and buy the chocolate first. Then give your POV character an equivalent treat, whatever would make her as happy as that chocolate is going to make you.

Yes, I had fun inventing these yesterday. I also read a lot of blog posts about writer’s block, most of which were annoying. It’s astonishing to me how many people think you can cure writer’s block by taking a walk or reading a book or doing something other than writing. Personally, that doesn’t work for me at all. The only way I know to cure writer’s block is to write. But I’m hoping that this game gives me a way to focus the words I’m trying to write when I’m having trouble coming up with them. I’m also hoping that I roll a lot of 20s and not so many 15s. Or 3s, for that matter, which feels like a hard one. But I will, of course, keep you posted!

And if you’re participating in NaNo yourself and want to be my writing buddy — although I just discovered that I’ve had messages in my NaNo mail since 2015, oops — I’m Wyndes on the NaNo boards. Looking forward to a playful and fun writing month!

Crooked River State Park

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The sky at Crooked River State Park, Georgia

In winter, days last longer in the south. In my head, I’ve known that for a long time. Alaska & Scandinavia = dark all day in the winter = duh. But in the past few days, I’ve really noticed the difference.

But let’s start at the beginning: I was staying in PA to watch my niece play Piglet in her school production of Winnie-the-Pooh, but I had one eye on the weather report and I was getting increasingly nervous. It sounded like it might be bad, and definitely not driving weather. I didn’t want to miss the play, though, so I took my chances and stayed.

It was the right call. The play was fantastic, and kinda crazy. The story is that Kanga is coming to the forest and all the other animals are scared of her because she insists on baths and medicine. I can see that in some version of this story, it’s about not being afraid of the unknown and maybe even understanding that baths and medicine are good for you. But in this version of the play (dialogue unchanged, merely a matter of delivery), it’s about child abuse and kidnapping and revenge. At one point, Rabbit is offering Roo candy in order to kidnap him so they can blackmail Kanga into giving up Piglet who has already been kidnapped and is being tortured… who knew Winnie-the-Pooh was such a psychopathic story?! But it really was all about the delivery. M played Piglet, which I had assumed would be a minor part, but it was not, and she was terrific. Her expressions in the scene where Kanga is forcibly giving her a bath were hysterical. I laughed so hard I worried I was being disruptive. I’m so glad I stuck around to see it.

The next day I braved the rain and started to drive. My tentative plan was to make it to a campground around the Virginia/North Carolina border and stay there for a few days. The weather did not cooperate. Neither did the traffic. As is the way of traffic in the rain, a major accident closed the entire highway for a while and probably added a solid two hours to my journey. I managed to view it as an adventure, getting off the highway and roaming around side streets at 25MPH, and obviously, my day was a hell of a lot better than that of the people involved in the accident, but still…

After I made it through the traffic jam, I stopped at CostCo for gas and snacks and bought myself, among other things, an LL Bean winter coat for $40. It rolls up and fits into a small sack like a tiny sleeping bag. I suspect it makes me look like a plump eggplant, but that’s okay, I was a warm plump eggplant! And I’m going to need it again within a few months, I think.

Eventually I wound up at a noisy Walmart in Virginia, not sleeping, but at least not driving. The next morning, I considered simply driving to the campground I’d intended to reach on the first day, but it was cold and gray and it seemed pointless. Why would I want to camp in cold, gray misery? Instead, I resolved that I would keep driving until I reached 70 degree weather and sunshine.

It didn’t happen. Instead, I spent another night at a Walmart parking lot. It was a longer day, because I stopped when it got dark, but it got dark later, followed by another sleepless night. I’m not anxious about parking lots the way I used to be. I don’t lie awake worrying about every strange sound. But at the very best of times, I’m not a great sleeper, and strange noises wake me up. Parking lots are filled with strange noises.

By Sunday morning, I was feeling exhausted and unwell. I walked Z around the parking lot, made myself some coffee and breakfast, and considered the miles. Another six hours of driving would get me to a driveway in Florida, at which point what I would really want to do would be to crawl into bed and take a nap for a day or two. Or I could take a break, stop at a campground, have a day or two to rest, clean out the tanks, do some organizing, get the van ready for another couple weeks of driveway days. The campground won.

So this morning I am at Crooked River State Park, in Georgia. It’s a nice campground, huge sites, with plenty of space between them. The landscape reminds me very much of Florida, with lots of scrubs pines and palmettos. I’ve seen the river, but only from a distance, but Z and I had a nice stroll this morning around the campground, the mini-golf course and playground. My one real negative about this campground is that Georgia State Parks are comparatively expensive: I’m paying almost $40/night for a water-electric site and if I’d been willing to drive another hour (and possibly had made a reservation ahead of time), I could get an equivalently nice site, possibly even nicer, for $24 night. Florida State Parks are a much better deal. And since this park is so much like a Florida park… shrug. But it’s a convenient stop for me and just for a couple of nights, so it felt worth it.

Yesterday I dumped the tanks and rinsed them out, and one of today’s goals is to fill them again, so that they can have an almost clean flush when I leave tomorrow. Also on my agenda: washing lots of dishes, defrosting the freezer, showering, sweeping, and appreciating the sunshine. Lots of appreciating the sunshine and warmth, I hope. It’s supposed to go up to 80 today, which would have annoyed me a couple of months ago, but which is going to feel very pleasant today.

Also on the agenda, doing some real writing. I’m thinking about doing a NaNoWriMo project this year. I’ve never succeeded at NaNo — the pressure freezes me up immediately — but I feel like it might be really fun to spend a month writing something with no goals, no agenda, but just trying to let the words pour out. I haven’t decided yet, because obviously, I’m currently working on projects that are “real,” ie, intended for eventual publication, and from a life perspective, I need to start doing things that will earn me money eventually. On the other hand, from a life perspective, maybe I should be working on maximizing the fun I have from writing for a while?

At any rate, NaNo starts on Thursday and one of my ideas for how I might make it work for me is to have a list of questions that I can use every time I get stuck on my story. Like story prompts, but for within a story. Maybe even a numbered list to go with rolling dice. Get stuck, roll the dice, use the idea. So examples of ideas — #2: what can the POV character smell right now and what does it mean to her? No #1, because obviously, with two six-sided dice, you never roll 1. But maybe I should get a RPG die instead, because also with two six-sided dice, your odds of some numbers come up more than others. Two and twelve are a lot less likely than six and seven. And talk about getting lost in the weeds! I need to make my list first, and then I can worry about how I will use it.

But for my fellow writers who might be reading this, if you have ideas about questions, please share them!

Mine so far:

1) What does the POV character smell and what does it mean to her?

2) What is an unexpected sound that would change the scene?

3) How can the character say “yes, and…”?

4) How can the challenge facing the character be immediately made more difficult?

5) What would an Aha! moment look like for the character right now?

6) How is some detail of the character’s past important in how they’re perceiving the current situation?

7) How does the POV character read/understand what a non-POV sees, believes, or feels in the situation?

I don’t know whether this will work. Like I said, I’m lousy at NaNo. But it feels like it might be fun to try. I also have absolutely no idea where or what my story is. I feel like if I start a new Tassamara story or work on Fen, I’m already constraining myself to worlds and characters and rules already created. But maybe that story snippet I posted the other day would be a fun project to keep going with. At any rate, I should stop writing this blog post, and start some of the other things on my list. I can think more about it while I wash dishes!

More reading than writing

I told my brother this morning that today should be the day I start south. And then, thoughtfully, that yesterday probably should have been. It is cold in Pennsylvania right now and I am so underprepared for cold weather. The van is quite cozy — its heater works beautifully — but bundling up in a multitude of layers every time I step outside is a PITA.

This is why people own winter coats.

I, however, do not own a winter coat and while I could buy one, of course, I haven’t wanted a mostly useless object cluttering up the van. I’m probably going to have to reconsider that position in the next few months, though. I’m not sure yet what this winter is going to bring — possibly a lot more driving hours than I will actually appreciate — but a winter coat might become a necessity.

Anyway, despite the cold, I’m not heading south yet. My niece is in her school play, opening night this Thursday, and I’m going to stick around long enough to see her perform. I’d be tempted to stick around for Halloween, too — she’s going to be some sort of skeleton pirate, and the preliminary make-up experiments have been impressively horrifying while also cute as anything — but it’s too cold and I have too much to do in Florida.

Also, I’ve gone over three weeks without dumping the tanks, and that’s too long. I’ll be staying inside the house for the next couple of days, partially because of the cold but mostly because I’ve hit the point where I really, truly, positively can’t use the toilet again until I dump the black tank, so it is definitely time to find myself a campground. I told my dad yesterday that the details of my future home fantasies were narrowing down to “running water.” Sure, a room with a view, nearby yoga, affordable cost-of-living, those are all nice. But running water is glorious.

Also, yesterday, I ordered a 50-pod pack of black-tank sanitizer pods from Amazon. Given that I can and often do go about two weeks without dumping the tanks, and I still have four or five pods left from the pack I’ve been using, that means I’ve got about two years worth of black-tank sanitizing ahead of me. My shopping subconscious possibly knows more about my future home plans than my conscious mind is willing to admit to.

Writing has been going horribly badly of late. I hate every word I write. Some of that is author love. I read The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne a couple of weeks ago. Someone online said that it was their favorite book of all time, their comfort read, so I checked it out from the library. It sat on my Libby bookshelf for over two weeks, because I don’t read much historical romance and I was dubious at best. Finally, when I had only a couple of days left, I started to read. A few chapters in, I was hating it, almost on the verge of giving up, when suddenly, there was a twist. A really good, really fun, totally implausible but super cool twist. I gobbled down the rest of the book, reached the end, started over again while trying to read more slowly, reached the end, and started over again! Not often that I read a book three times in a row.

I actually still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It definitely wouldn’t make it onto my favorite book ever list or even anywhere close, largely because the sex is… well, pre-#metoo, if that’s sufficient explanation. But the writing was still fantastic, even if the romance was a prime example of questionable consent issues. But I promptly put all the rest of her books on hold at the library. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, while I was waiting, Amazon sent me a gift card, and I didn’t hesitate. (Incidentally, The Spymaster’s Lady is $2.99 on Kindle at the moment, so if you do like historical romance, it’s a deal.) So over the course of the past ten days or so, I’ve read all of Joanna Bourne’s books.

For a little while, they sunk me into the depths of despair. She’s an incredible writer — her plots are completely fun, with levels of implausibility that you just don’t care about at all. Seriously, lost heiresses, spy schools, amnesia, they’ve got it all. But she sets them in worlds with so many vivid, concrete, sensory details that they feel real. Then she adds smart characters who actually behave like smart people (most of them anyway); language and metaphors that fit the point of view; and a sense of wry humor. They made me want to give up on being a writer entirely.

Then, fortunately, I think, I read her very first book, which was not available at my library but was available at Amazon. The most important thing to know about that book is that it was originally published in 1983. The second most important to know about it is that you really, really, really don’t want to read it as an example of her writing. Probably, you really don’t want to read it at all. I’m actually a little surprised that she let it be re-issued. But it comforted me. I will not give up on being a writer quite yet.

And that does mean I should get back to it. At about 5:30 this morning, I had an idea about where I’d gone wrong with Fen, and why I was so stuck. I knew, knew, knew that I should get up and open my computer and write it down, but it was so cozy in my nest of blankets. I promised myself I’d remember it. Ha. But maybe when I stare at the file for a while, it will come back to me.

Off I go to stare.

Memories

After several days inside my brother’s house, I moved back out to the van last night. My cozy tiny house is feeling very tiny this morning. And it’s astonishing how quickly I started taking hot water for granted. I began to wash my cutting board this morning without thinking and then remembered, right, the water pump is not on, so no water. And I could turn the water pump on with the push of a button, but the water wouldn’t be hot, because I didn’t turn the water heater on. Ah, yes, life in a van.

But I’m happy to be back in my van, even if it is feeling more than cozy (read: cramped and inconvenient), because it is also feeling homey and peaceful.

I read some sad news on Facebook, that bastion of unwelcome tidings, a few days ago. Honestly, I’ve started to dread looking at FB — it feels like a magnet for misery, at least in my feed. My immediate response was to pick up my phone and make a call, but my secondary response has been to spend a lot of time browsing my own history. Photographs and journals and blog posts, some lovely reminders of times past.

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Flowers in Arcata

It made me resolved to take more pictures of human beings, though. I have lots of sunrises, lots of flowers, lots of scenery, and lots and lots of dog pictures.

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My dogs looking cute together.

But not very many people pictures.

I don’t think I need them, exactly — I have the memories and sometimes I have the stories. This one is one of my favorites, but I do wish I’d written out the “But you have to wear a mask” part, because the memory makes me smile, but the details are lost. That’s okay, though, I still have the smile.

I dreamed last week that Bartleby’s new owner needed to give B back to me, because his circumstances had changed and he couldn’t take care of B anymore. He passed him over to me and B was matted and skinny, really skinny, and I felt horrible because obviously somehow I’d given B to people who neglected him. But then I was so happy to have him back! He snuggled into my arms and I promised him an immediate bath with a long blow-dry afterwards (he loved the blow-dryer) and plenty of food.

Then I woke up.

In a way it was a great dream, but it ruined my day. I told Suzanne during our phone call that death felt like that to me, in general, like every day you have to keep waking up into a reality that’s just not the one you wanted to wake up in. And there’s no way to make the universe take you back to the reality you had yesterday.

But that’s the nature of time, anyway. One of the stories that I remembered this weekend — no record of it except my own memory — was when Suzanne and Greg and R and I went out to Chinese food in Oakland when R was about two, maybe three. Greg walked with R, pointing out various things in the windows, and… well, conversing with him. Lots of adults aren’t really capable of having conversations with a toddler. They talk at the toddler, but they’re not about the listening so much. Greg listened to R, answered his questions, had a real discussion with him, and then told me my kid was amazing. Toddler R was amazing, and even though I am lucky enough to have Adult R in my life, I do sometimes miss Toddler R. But Greg was amazing, too, and I’m going to miss him.

Goodbye, senormoment. I wish you’d had the time to organize those photos.

Unrelated to anything…

Ilona Andrews had some great writing advice yesterday, of which my favorite line was Just write cool stuff to amuse yourself. And don’t look back until you are done.”

Today, I set out to follow said advice, which meant closing the two Scrivener files that I’ve been working on (which have not been amusing me) and looking for a file that I haven’t opened in a while, called something like Random Fiction. I should probably have just created a new file, because I wound up reading old story fragments instead of writing. I have a lot of story fragments. Trunk books, some people call them.

And you know, I was going to write something about common themes, things that must matter to me because they keep showing up in my random fiction words, but instead I think I’ll offer up another snippet and then go back to writing some more of those random words. I will just say, though, that it’s pretty clear to me that eventually I’m going to write a book with time travel in it.

A snippet…

Grace put her head in her hands. She could solve this problem. Of course she could. There was always a solution. She just had to think it through.

But her stomach felt like rocks had settled in it and her throat felt tight.

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss, but…”

Grace straightened so quickly that she nearly knocked the cup the old woman was extending toward her out of her hand.

The woman pulled it back quickly, but extended it again as soon as Grace was still. “I believe you might need this.”

“Need it?”

“Yes.” The old woman’s eyes were kind, her voice soothing. “It will help you.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Help me how?” Her tone was unfriendly. The old woman might seem innocent enough, but Grace didn’t know her. And she had no reason to trust strangers. Not here.

The cup was a simple thing; plain white, but sturdy. The liquid inside it was a murky brown. The old woman pushed it a couple inches closer to Grace. “A warm drink always helps, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you think I need help?” Grace asked, but her hand lifted to take the cup.

“Oh, my dear.” The woman chuckled as she released the cup into Grace’s hand. “That man with you?”

“My father.” Grace stared into the depths of the liquid. It was dense, absorbing the light. She took a sniff. Nothing she recognized. Not floral, not fruity.

“He wasn’t exactly quiet,” the woman said. “Why I bet everyone on the square heard him scolding you. Not to mention your arrival. It was rather loud.”

“Was it?” Grace’s hand tightened on the cup. She could feel the heat of the drink through the smooth material. It felt nice against her palm. Comforting.

“Quite loud,” the woman confirmed. “Like an explosion. And then all that smoke. A bit messy, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t really have much to do with it,” Grace admitted. “That was all him.”

She looked around her. She hadn’t paid much attention to where her father had dumped her. He’d been angry enough that she’d been focused on him.

It wasn’t even her fault. Not really. Oh, sure, she had let that adventurer into the castle, but it had been cold outside. She couldn’t just let him freeze, could she?

Well, she could have. And she should have. But she’d been bored silly. It felt like winter had gone on forever and she’d been so sick of the snow and its eternal sameness. A stranger showing up had been a change.

And she hadn’t let him in because he was cute. Her father had been totally wrong about that. Sure, the adventurer was cute — Sam, his name was Sam. Sam was cute but it was not like Grace had known that when she let him in. He’d been all bundled up in layers and layers of winter clothes. She’d only discovered that he was cute when he’d warmed up enough to shed a few of his coats.

And it was so not her fault that Sam had gone exploring after she’d let him use the bathroom. What should she have done? Told him to pee in the corner, like he was a dog that wasn’t housebroken? Her father wouldn’t have appreciated that, either.

And how could she have anticipated that Sam would find the library? Well, maybe she could have predicted that. It was only two doors away from the bathroom, after all, and when she’d shown him where the bathroom was, the door to the library had been open, with the giant Book of Days open on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Maybe she could have guessed that it would look too interesting to resist.

Still, she hadn’t planned on letting Sam read the Book of Days. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong on purpose. She hadn’t deliberately disobeyed her father. She knew she wasn’t allowed to touch the book. And she hadn’t! Letting Sam touch it, well, her father had never explicitly told her that no one was allowed to read the book. Sure, maybe she could have extrapolated that if she wasn’t allowed to touch it, no guests would be allowed to touch it either.

But it’s not like they ever had any guests.

Really, it was her father’s fault. If he’d invited people to the castle now and then, like a civilized wizard, then maybe she would have known the rules for visitors.

But now this. She was sitting on the edge of a fountain in the middle of what looked like a major tourist trap. Cute little houses, cute little shops. It must be one of those historic recreation places. Like a Renaissance Faire, only not.

But as Grace spotted people peering out of windows at her, the rocks in her stomach sank even lower. The people didn’t look right.

Well, they didn’t look too wrong. Not like aliens or anything. They were normal people. But they didn’t look like the cheerful shopkeepers of a highly profitable, vacation destination. They looked like… shopkeepers of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

In the middle of no-when.

“What year is it?” she asked the old woman.

“Year? What do you mean?” The old woman looked confused.

“Year? Like, um, year of our lord, something or other, like that?”

“I don’t know what you mean, child. Perhaps you should speak to the priest?”

Grace bit her lip. Uh-oh. This was very bad news.

“Except…” The woman cleared her throat. Her glance around the square was almost a glare. “Except you might not want to do that.”

Grace followed her gaze. There weren’t lots of people, just a few. A sturdy man with a big red nose wearing a heavy apron, stained with splatters that looked like blood. A woman, hair pulled stringently back, wearing a less heavy apron sprinkled with flour. A lanky kid, taller than the woman, leaning over her shoulder. An old man, perched on a stump by a door…

Per request…

Alice asked, I’m delivering.

Moving on from MA

I am exhausted.

I feel like I shouldn’t say that — people are working three jobs, moms with chronic illnesses are dragging themselves out of bed to get their kids to school every day, nurses are ten hours into their 12-hour shifts, 70-year-old Walmart greeters are standing on hard floors for minimum wage… lots and lots of people have more right to be exhausted than I do. But despite my sympathy for all those people, I’m still exhausted.

Fortunately, it won’t last long. I had an extremely busy, very sociable week in Massachusetts, visiting Rockport, Boston, Gloucester, Cape Cod, and Maynard. Lots of movement, lots of driving, lots of talking. My goodness, the talking. I basically went days without talking to anyone but the dog in Canada, so I made up for lost time over the past week.

But now I’m back in Pennsylvania, experimenting with staying in my brother’s guest room (technically my nephew’s room, but he’s not using it at the moment), and planning a reasonably quiet, business-intensive couple of weeks. Lots of writing, lots of file updating, maybe some researching. But probably not so much of all that today, actually. Today I think I’m going to be satisfied with going through my photos, writing this blog post, making a to-do list, and walking the dog. And maybe cooking dinner.

Also, though, taking advantage of real internet to be indiscriminate about the pictures that I liked from the last week.

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Sun rising in Rockport

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A fisherman already hard at work in Rockport

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Crashing waves in Cape Cod

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Cape Cod lighthouse

Best of September 2018

September 2018 included one farm, one national park, two provincial parks, four independent campgrounds and two driveways, for a total of ten different places.

Best meal of the month is easy: my friend B fed me swordfish in Rockport, MA, baked with olive oil and thyme, and it was the best swordfish I’ve ever tasted, one of those meals that you keep thinking about. I’m not going to start buying swordfish because I’ve had swordfish before and I know it’s not usually as delicious as B’s swordfish. But I’m definitely moving swordfish much higher on my mental “worth the risk if you’re at a fish market and it’s really, really fresh,” list.

Best event of the month: also pretty easy. Yesterday my friend C took me to a concert at the Gardner Museum, to see Sergey Malov. I enjoyed the music, but I enjoyed wandering around the art museum afterwards even more. They had a painting by John Singer Sargent on exhibit that I loved so much that when we got back to the house, I spent a solid hour on the internet trying to learn more about one of its subjects, Rachel, the daughter. In the painting, she’s eleven years old, and she looks like a rebel.

Um, yep. She has no wikipedia entry, no web sites dedicated to her story, in fact no stories of her history online at all, but glimpses of her can be found in various Google book entries from the twentieth century. She went to Radcliffe, married an archaeologist in 1914; worked with him in New Mexico; excavated human remains in California; travelled to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras; and during WWI, was a paid intelligence agent for the Office of Naval Intelligence in Costa Rica — a spy, in other words, reportedly the only female overseas paid agent for the ONI. They had at least two, possibly three children, but divorced in the late 1920s. Sometime after that, she may have written a children’s book with Rhoda Power, possibly about Peru, or at least she’s on a copyright page for a children’s story called “The Baker and His Neighbor.” She basically disappears then, until in 1950 — at 58 — she married Robert Barton, an Irish Nationalist, politician, farmer, and judge. I’m not a biographer, not someone who’s willing to spend the next year hunting down primary sources, but I seriously think she deserves a novel. And it was fun following random links to try to learn more about her.

But back to my September! Favorite campground — I loved Campbell’s Cove on Prince Edward Island and Glooscap on the Bay of Fundy, but Glooscap wins, because the view from my site was so fantastic. That said, Prince Edward Island was hands-down my favorite place and if I had to pick a campground to go back to — with no ability to control my site location — I’d go to Campbell’s Cove in a heartbeat.

Overall, my September was an incredibly lovely month. It had a few bumps in the road, of course. I had to cut my last post short because all I really wanted to do was spew rage and fury about the state of politics in the US and that’s not something I want to have on my blog, even when I’m really feeling it. But listening to music and wandering around the museum yesterday reminded me that human beings have been creating beauty and sharing it with other people for hundreds of years. And during all of those hundreds of years, terrible things have also been happening. Some terrible things are happening now, but the world is still beautiful and people are still creating beauty. And I am still incredibly lucky to be living the life I live. [image error]

More Glooscap, because why not?

Blueberry Pond, Pownal, Maine

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Not Blueberry Pond

Blueberry Pond Campground in Pownal is a nice little family-run independent campground, just about five miles away from Freeport, Maine, and the outdoor shopping available there: ie, LL Bean, North Face, Patagonia, and so. The above picture, however, is not of Blueberry Pond, but of a sunrise at Glooscap in Nova Scotia, because I left Blueberry Pond yesterday and only this morning realized that I took no pictures while I was there. None, nada, zip, zilch. It was actually a reasonable campground: my window faced onto forest, so my site was nicely private, and it was green and pretty and reasonably spacious. I would happily stay there again.

But it was no Glooscap. I sort of suspect that’s what I’m going to be saying about a lot of campgrounds in the future: nice, but no Glooscap. This is made somewhat more amusing to me by the discovery that Glooscap is a legendary native figure who is “kind, benevolent, a warrior against evil and the possessor of magical powers.”

But I’ve moved on, both from Nova Scotia and from Maine. I’ll be spending the next week or so visiting friends and family in Massachusetts, and by this time next week, I expect I’ll be back in Pennsylvania, staying at my brother’s house for a while. A more organized person would be making a list of all the self-publishing related things I should be doing while I have good internet — updating keywords, revising print files, exploring AMS ads — and probably even getting started on that list, but I’m going to treat the next week as mostly vacation time. Yesterday, I broke my writing streak of 661 days of writing 1000 words every day, and I actually felt fine about it. It felt like a very conscious decision to let go of the requirements I impose upon myself.

New River Beach, New Brunswick

When I left Parrsboro, I headed south. My first stop was in Saint John, New Brunswick, for an exciting visit to a Canadian Costco. Yes, I’m such a good tourist. No museums, no art galleries, no historic sites, but Costco, definitely!

But when R and I were grocery shopping, we discovered some delicious pretend trail mix at Canadian Costco and I wanted to get more of it before returning to the US. What makes it “pretend” trail mix, you ask? Well, it’s a combo of dried fruit, nuts, and chocolate, which sounds like trail mix to me, but the chocolate in it is so good that it feels like trail mix that belongs in fancy bowls at cocktail parties instead of out in the woods. Funnily enough, the American version, as shown on Amazon, calls it “Deluxe Chocolate Trail Mix” but the Canadian version is just “Deluxe Chocolate Mix.” Maybe the Canadians don’t feel the need to pretend that mixed nuts and chocolates are health food?

Anyway, post-Costco, I’d intended to keep driving, but I was already tired and just not in the mood to be on the road. So I looked for a nearby campground and found New River Beach Provincial Park. Or Parc Provincial Plage New River, depending on where you start reading the name. (The actual paperwork reads “Parc Provincial Plage New River Beach Provincial Park” which would be the fully bilingual name.)

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It was a one-night stay, arriving mid-afternoon, departing first thing in the morning, and so it could have been a totally forgettable campground for me. But, the campground was really, really nice. It made me feel so much better about being back on the road. The sites were shaded and private, the walk around the campground was lovely, there was a beautiful beach nearby, and best of all, the showers were clean, hot, and free!

And modern. One of the things that most annoys me about campground showers is that there’s rarely any place to put your shampoo and soap inside the shower except on the ground. These showers had two built-in ledges on the fiberglass walls. Just remembering it makes me sigh with pleasure. Yes, the small joys of being a full-time camper, ha.

The next day I headed to Acadia, which is where I am now. I think I’m probably not going to write a separate post about Acadia. I’m in the Schoodic Woods campground and it’s lovely — nice, modern, big sites, reasonable privacy, lots of nature around. But Zelda is resisting going for long walks and I’m not sure we’re going to see much of the park.

And it feels like my head has already moved on. I’m visiting lots of people in the next ten days, scheduling a night here and a night there, and looking forward to all my visits. But also feeling like I’m not being where I am very well right now — I’m busy thinking about all the places I’m going to be and all the things I’m going to do instead of appreciating this day that I’m in. I think I’d like to get back to appreciating the day I’m in, instead of trying to think about it to write about it. But it’s 48 degrees outside, sunny and beautiful, and I’m glad to be here, even if I do just sit in my chair and breathe for a while.