Gale!

'Twas a dark and stormy night (for real)
And the wind was blowin' a gale (honest!)
And the Captain said to the First Mate (that's me ...)
Wife, are ye spinnin' a tale?
And this is the tale she told ... (to be continued on publication of first novel.)

So, I was actually working on my WIP (Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead) as the gale kicked up.  One minute, it's merely windy and the next- WOMPH!  The winds threw sheets of rain at the poor little cottage, and the ancient wooden structure creaked and moaned in protest. It was incomprehensible to me that electric service prevailed under the circumstances, but the lights merely flickered every now and then and I worked for quite a while. It turned out that this was a small gale with prevailing winds at 60 kilometers an hour.  A lot for our teeny cottage, though.

After a while, I began to feel small and exposed, sitting at my table in front of double windows with nature snarling and smacking to get in, armed with buckets of rain and sea.  Also, I was stuck. And fatigued.

It was a good time to go curl up in a blanket in a pool of light in the back corner of the cottage with Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.  The protagonist, whose point of view is the lens through which the story is told, is Thomas Cromwell, and he is rendered a sympathetic but complicated character. In the last book, Wolf Hall, St. Thomas More (one of my favorite saints) comes across as a religious prig who likes to torture heretics, but the writing is transportive.  The writing is so good, in fact, that truth leaks out all over the place and Cromwell finds himself perpetually haunted by More, though this is not the premise of the book.  Ms. Mantel has done what most writers of historical fiction have failed to do; she has mustered the universality of human nature and the particulars of that period of history to give life and breath to her characters. Her fiction is far from dry and lacks none of the grittiness that comes across as anachronism and ideological cant (think Ken Follett, Phillipa Gregory, or the writers of HBO's The Tudors) that is the currency of some best-selling authors of the genre.

Alrighty, then.  Off to the Souris Visitor Centre to post this blog entry.  The quicker we get there, the quicker we get back for a blustery walk along the cape in bright sunshine.

Gale coming in (and we thought it was clearing!)

The morning after, seas are still pretty high.

At least the beach furniture was not taken by Davy Jones.  We are going to have to dig it out, though!

WIP On a Stick

I wrote on vacation.

My goal was to write 10,000 words, but then beautiful weather happened.  And a boat (with a tube to be dragged in!)  Amazing beach conditions (read: no jellyfish!) And lots of people I haven't seen in years.  And the ever-hopeful (but false) notion that I can beat my sister in a Quiddler tournament.  And a hilarious game called Hedbandz.  Reading had to be done: Moon Over Manifest and half of Bring Up the Bodies. Oh, and my sister's dog needed to be walked on the beach while she did most of the cooking.  All that hake and all those mussels, steamers, oysters and scallops needed to be eaten.  Downton Abbey, Season Three needed to be watched (hated the ending and I don't care if it's a spoiler alert for the four people on the planet who haven't seen it yet) and lots of sleeping and napping had to be attended to.

So you see, I was busy.

But I was also profoundly glad my sister brought her laptop and I brought my WIP on a stick. I did manage 3,000 words, and the story is falling into place in a way I would not have imagined.  All the dead ends, discarded prologues and stripped out exposition have only served to enrich the world I'm building in my own mind.  None of the writing I've done over the last four years has gone to waste— just as in life, no experience goes to waste. I've lived with this story for so long now that I feel like I'm writing from my own experiences within the story. I don't know if I can explain it any better than that. It's probably what most writers can attest to ... it just took me a long while to get there.

Also, my sister turned out to be a wonderful critiquer. "Rosemary, you can read what you have to me ONCE.  I'll tell you what I think."  And she did.  She's an avid reader and everything she had to say was right on.

Today is a glorious day in New England.  Intensely blue sky, comfortable temperature and breezes ... much more like a summer day on Prince Edward Island than a summer day here in the Connecticut river valley. Early August is often brutal with lots of humidity and heat. Sometimes even the violent late-afternoon thunderstorms can do little to mitigate the misery.  But not today. It is truly lovely. I am headed over to the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury to see Marcie ride her sister Annie's horse in a Daniel Stewart riding clinic.  I can't imagine a nicer way to spend an afternoon.

Except for maybe whipping out my WIP on a stick, firing up the laptop and writing out on the porch.

What makes a Boston Whaler even more awesome? A tube and tow rope!

Writer's retreat as seen from the boat. Also the home of the North Shore Quiddler Tournament.

Crowded beach day.  There are approximately 10 or 11 people wandering around.

My front yard. Sunsets are time consuming, as well.