I know I’ve
been silent of late. This is a function
of three things. First, I was getting
ready to leave for a week. Second, I
left for a week. Third, having been gone
for an entire week and virtually incommunicado, I returned to a week of
turmoil. But today, I’m just going to
talk about part two…leaving for a week, because it was glorious!
I
arrived on Middle Bass Island around 6 on Sunday afternoon…August 17. After driving to my temporary domicile,
clothes, food, and computer equipment were moved inside and I got busy getting
my living situation organized. Stacked
on the dining room table were two manuscripts I had printed at home for
reference and notes. There had been a
glimmer of hope that I could sit still long enough to finish both books in my
time on the island, but after due consideration (how far along I had gotten in
the actual writing and how recently I had worked on each story), I decided that
I would concentrate on the coming of age (or should that be coming of middle
age?) book. With organization,
decisions, dinner and a glass of wine behind me, I crashed early, hoping to get
a good start on Monday morning.
From
early Monday morning through noon Tuesday, I read and reread the original
50,000-word manuscript, correcting inconsistencies in the existing document and
fixing irritating timeline issues. After
lunch, I finally began the process of writing.
With doors and windows flung wide, the sound of gently lapping water, and the
cooling lake breeze blowing through, the words began to flow. When my eyes needed a break, I would look to
my left through the open French doors into the garden
Other
than the few early morning walks I managed to squeeze in, and sleeping and
eating of course, I simply wrote. There was no
TV and no WiFi. I barely had cell
service, which was hit and miss at best.
Sometimes I actually had 3G…sometimes I had 1X…sometimes I had no signal
at all, which was a particular pain if I needed to Google something for the
book or use my online Thesaurus.
At
night, I slept with the doors and windows open wide, the incessant sounds of
crickets and water becoming the best and most soothing lullaby in memory. I slept like the proverbial rock. Quite honestly, I could have stayed there
forever. Of course, winter would be
problematic…no crickets, and only crunching ice sounds.
I ended
up staying an extra night, at the invitation of the owners. The additional time enabled me to exceed my word
count goal. My 50,000-word manuscript had
grown to 80,500 words by the time I departed the island. Even now I find it amazing that I managed to
write 30,500 words, more than 12 chapters, between noon on Tuesday and midnight
on Friday.
Staying
on Middle Bass was the epitome of distraction-free time. It’s the type of time a writer can’t find at
home, with family, laundry, cooking, phone calls, door bells, e-mail, and work
issues looming. I could use several
Middle Bass weeks every year! Now all I
need to do is win the lottery…then I can buy my own place on Middle Bass. In the meantime, I will continue working on
the novel with a self-imposed completion deadline of end of September and edit
deadline of mid-October. With any luck,
I hope to have the new novel for sale on Amazon and Kindle by November 1...just
in time for Christmas.
I hated
it when my idyllic week came to an end.
Life has a way of bringing you back to reality with a jolt. My immediate one was learning that I had been
driving on an expired license since mid-July.
So I drove off the ferry and directly into Port Clinton, where I paid a
premium to regain my driving legality before heading home!
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