Vacation (DOG EAR)
Vacation (DOG EAR)
kay, so I’m slacking.
We’re up in North Carolina, high up beyond the ends of the earth (Beech Mountain, but sadly, there are houses now beyond the end of the earth – they are clearing the mountain behind us for homes). It’s a week-long vacation, and I’m sitting here on the final day, reflecting on it.
It wasn’t much of a stargazer’s vacation. We brought the scope, sure enough, but there were only two nights where it was clear enough to see (and one of them was 35 degrees, but we went up into the high hills anyway, just for a looksee).
It wasn’t much of a reader’s vacation. Ordinarily I bring a ton of books and race through them, reading voraciously (as the word is always used). However, this time I picked an old 1986 scifi novel, one that doesn’t move quick (same characters, same scenes, same relationships) so I’m dragging through that. So much for all those other books I had on standby.
But writing. I did get a lot of writing done.
Monday I knocked out a short story for the web on commission, not a lot of cash but a nice hobby-write. Updated a review on a book I’d finished on the way up. But for my current Tubitz and Mergenstein project, I was able to knock out a lot. Rattled out a chapter a day while I was up here, rising in the morning to sit in my parents’ comfy chairs, looking out at the mountains and typing away. Even better, my long walks later in the day gave me a chance to reflect on what I was writing, to determine that the main characters need a section of the book to learn to respect each other, to come together as a team. Since the second section involves them being forced apart, it turns out that it was a capitol time to discover this. Now they can play at their own little agendas, coming to realize as they fight, duty-bound, to save each other that there might be more to that foppish noble boy or that gutter-born thief-girl. I don’t know what things would have been like had I written this at home but I think this is better.
Interesting thought – the changes to written works based on the events in the writer’s life. I’m sure Hemingway had passages where he wrote drunk or uncaring. And if anyone ever read Douglas Adams Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, they will know what happened to Coleridge.
So I’ll finish this off now. The sun is casting long shadows of this mountain across those opposite, I’ve gotten DOG EAR updated, and there is more adventure to uncover in my current project. I think we’re at the part where the Count comes down one morning to find Tubitz (still in her elegant evening wear, but without her pumps) playing pool. Great scene…