So you’ve just dinnered with your two Canadian couples, watching the setting sun play over German fields from your riverboat, guzzling down glass after glass of wine. And with all that rich food in your belly, with your wife’s hand in yours, you retire to your stateroom, close the door, loosen your tie, and…

And..?

Write.

Or, specifically, blog. I always blog my vacations – you can find the page HERE. Every trip I take, I try to make a blog entry for each day, and run them one per day on my site so fans (all three of you) can follow along.

It’s odd to experiance vacations this way – after every event, you walk away thinking how much information should I include? And is there an angle I can cut to make it snappy and interesting? And which pictures should I use?

It’s tough to do sometimes – you’ll come back to your stateroom dead beat and sit in front of your tinytop (after fussing with the adaptor/converter brick) and try to be witty. Half the time, it starts reading like How I spent my summer vacation. Backspace and try it from the top.

And there were the rage moments (moments of blind anger against corporate inefficiency/indifference that ruined parts of our trip). And that helpless frustration when my wife was injured (foreshadowing – you’ll have to follow my reports to find out what happened). Even though I was tired or relived or just plain depressed after the fact, I’d still have to find the anger of the moment and throw it across the page for all to see.

But like writing your father’s obit or sitting with a coworker at 5:30 pm on a Friday evening to help with a resume, writing is never what we think it is. Sure, we can write when we want to. But for trip blogging, I have to jot down my ideas as they happen, putting them into a word doc for transfer to the blog once I’m home. Otherwise I’ll miss a day. Then things will get remote, the edge will be gone, and I’ll get behind and rush the entire set.

No, sometimes you need to sit and write, even when you are tired and drunk and angry.

Like this, now, written in our hotel room in Amsterdam with the sun setting and that bed looking fit for a nap and dinner’s in an hour.

Write.

Now.

>>>CERTAINLY, THE ONLY WAY I GOT MY NOVELS DONE AND INTO PRINT WAS TO PUSH IT. SO PUSH THAT CREDIT CARD OUT AND BUY A BOOK. PRETTY CHEAP NOW<<<