a funny thing happened on the way to the wedding

Nice dress, right? And that guy benext to me, he's my fiancé, aka, the father of the groom. Guess who else was wearing my same dress at this wedding?

No, not the mother of the groom. Close. Yup, the mother of the bride. Big fat faux pas, eh?

Oh well. The wedding was terrific, and the bride and groom were adorable, elated and completely present during the whole shindig. I should take a page from their book. We all should, actually. How to be calm in the face of a life-altering event.

Aside from the look/feel/spirit of a particular nuptial celebration, every wedding has its own chemistry. You know what I'm talking about, right? There are the rancor and hard feelings weddings where you can taste bitterness in the air. Then there are the "let's get it on in the coat closet weddings" of lust and bad behavior. Not to be outdone by the "we're untouchable, keep your distance" society weddings where the bride and groom float about as if just sheared from the top of the cake itself, all consumed with the appearance of being the perfect newlyweds.

My favorite weddings are the ones that are clearly executed to reflect the choices of the couple itself. Where convention takes a back seat to personality, belief and a shared vision. Weddings that foretell the collaboration necessary in order to navigate a successful marriage. Brendan and Katie's wedding was one of those. From the bride's choice to forego a veil, but include a ceremony where their mothers bound them together with green ribbon, to the setting itself: a farm on the outskirts of Portland, under towering English oaks with the trickle of a creek as backdrop. There was no wedding march. Instead, a solo classical guitarist strummed a pleasant musical prelude. There were 12 bridesmaids and half as many groomsmen. Who says those numbers should line up, anyway?

As far as the reception, it took place in a fancied-up polebarn. Kirk provided homemade brew (which had been fermenting in my kitchen the last couple of weeks), the best man spun tunes from his computer (mostly 80's songs…go figger). We set up a slide show, too: highlights of the bride and groom as children as well as their nine-year romance (they met as young teens and have been together ever since, even during four years of college attendance in separate states).

The couple departed in their Honda Element, festooned with the usual signage and imperatives to honk for love and so on. They are in Mexico now, on a honeymoon that I hope isn't being spoiled by bad weather. And the couple pictured above? They're gonna be tying the knot too. But don't tell anyone, it's a secret! (And when it happens, nobody within a hundred miles better be wearing my outfit!)

it’s not easy being green

First, let me admit that I'm not a biking activist. I haven't pored over the controversy or ingested the bike maps or written my congressperson about bike lanes for all. Like almost every motorist I know, I too get pissed off when I'm in a hurry and I have to go slow due to bikes riding three abreast down a major boulevard. But. I live in a city known for its progressive bike laws and bike culture. And—I have a great bike: one of those K2 women's bikes that let you ride more upright and so forth. Plus, it's been record-breaking wonderful weather all September, and I've moved into a new, spacious office on the fringe of the NW Industrial area which is proximal to all kinds of bikeable thoroughfares. And—the streets of NW Portland and downtown are a mess with construction and repair, so driving around down here and finding parking is more of a hassle than ever.

Today was the second time I ventured out midday for some exercise. My endpoint destination was my Pilates class, a studio nestled on the third floor of a building in the heart of downtown Portland. Typically, the drive takes 12 minutes. The Smart Park garage where I stow my vehicle for $2.50 is usually crammed full of cars at that hour, and finding a space takes another 6 minutes or so. Add to that another 6 minutes of walking, and you have a wheels up to gate time of 25 minutes, give or take. On my bike today it took 18. I saved money, gas and time. I got exercise and a pleasant ride through Portland in its finest season. But all was not roses in the city of the roses.

The first expletive launched my way came from a crazy person. An elderly pedestrian who admonished me from a street corner for not having a Vespa. "At least it's got a motor!" she howled. That made me feel bad. Like, maybe I was visibly huffing and puffing up the gentle slope of 18^th—one of the major bike friendly one-ways in Portland. I shrugged it off, and pedaled on.

At the intersection of NW 16^th and Everett, I got to experience the business end of one of Portland's clever new bike boxes, and, sure enough, the motorists all kept their legal distances until I was safely across the street. A block later, however, the generous bike lane abruptly ended, providing the usual amputation-inviting space between the parked cars and the lane. I took the sidewalk. And I didn't leave it for several blocks. Turns out that the Pearl district, with its all its green building and sushi establishments and zipcars and pedestrian friendly streetcar loving claims is a biker's nightmare. The Utopian who drafted this urban bailiwick was not a proponent of the two-wheeler. The streets are narrow—yet this does not deter the SUVs and trucks that stream along them. And then there's the streetcar tracks and stations that provide video game-like peril to bicyclists who must duck and dodge them lest their tires slip into the gaps that seem almost tailor-made to cause fatal injury.

watch the bike box video

The next insult hurled my way came from an individual who expressed vexation over my choice of public property in front of which I was clasping closed my helmet strap. It was a mailbox, and clearly, the posting of his letter couldn't wait ten seconds. His fists were clenched and he seethed, "Do you mind?" as though I'd chosen to sit on top of the mailbox and eat a sandwich.

Oddly, the cars with whom I shared the road were very courteous. They went out of their way to offer wide berth or, when we squeezed into shoulerless lanes, they kept their distance behind me. It was the pedestrians that time after time felt challenged and inconvenienced with sharing the commute. I suppose it boils down to the old pecking order, the transportation food chain: big rigs, small cars, bikes and feet.

appropriating the real world

Yesterday my pal (let's call him Bob) took me on a tour of OHSU. It was the second OHSU-related tour I've been on in service to research for STL. "Bob" works in media up there, so I've decided to obfuscate his identity lest he get in trouble for what I'm going to cull from the tour. My narrator's husband is modeled after the VP of finance up there on the hill, and I wanted a feel for what it's like to work in a job whose stresses include keeping a multi-million dollar government-connected medical facility in the black. I also wanted to know what his daily walking commute from triple diamond parking to his executive office in Baird Hall would be like.

I have six pages of notes—lots of minutiae that comes in handy when building the iceberg of authority. For instance, there's these vending machines peppered throughout the OHSU tunnels. They look like Coke machines, but what they dispense instead of soda are packets of things like Mammalian Cell Lysis Reagents and so forth. The hill has lots of cutting edge research going on. You've heard of Druker, right? The dude behind the leukemia pill gleevec? These guys are the golden boys of the hill. The research scientists and the neurosurgeons who bring in the big bucks. And my character, the fictive Arthur Collier, is charged with balancing the beans that come in from these hot shots with stuff like health insurance for the multitudes of support staff who keep the furnaces blasting.

I'm quite tickled at the prospect of orchestrating what will happen between Artie and Frances when he has to shut down her division of stem cell research at the primate center because damage control and PETA PR is costing the organization too much money. And when he does this, you better believe that he's going to get a big fat bonus.

more backwards writing

I've been marginally successful with my grand plan to work on STL before engaging in hired pen work. Or laundry. Or hanging bookshelves. Or watering the zucchini. Okay, maybe a little less than marginally successful. Would you believe less unsuccessful than typically?

One thing I did realize, a lovely epiphany in the early morning sun of my front porch, is that I need to add another narrative element to the second part of my book. As with the first part, I need to alternate between backstory and present day, mostly because there is too much unexperienced inference between Frances and her siblings without it. I realized during the writing of the tree-cutting scene that there is no context for Frances's relationships with her various brothers and sisters, so the reader can't sink into the scene with a sense of alarm, nostalgia, pathos, etc… Also, with so many characters and not much previous purchase on their characterizations, it's easy to get lost in this raucous tree-cutting scene—easy to forget who's who.

Also, Frances's vulnerability is not quite on the page yet, and there's nothing like a few humiliating scenes from adolescence to sew that up.

I've decided to pepper this backstory stuff in, presenting small scenes that feature some significant interactions between Frances and Collin, Frances and Cherry, Frances and Tess, Frances and Morgan and Frances and the grand fuck up, Sheldon.

The Collin chapter is proving an invigorating engagement—there are some secrets being revealed—to me—as I write it.

happy back-to-page day

This is my 17^th year as a back-to-school mom. I've placed children in kindergarten seats, walked them up bus stairs, pushed them through the doors of elementary, middle and high schools, deposited them in dorm rooms and scary University area hovels. I've run through the rainbow of emotions, too. Everything from having to pull over to the side of the road for uncontrollable sobbing to executing the I've-kicked-the-habit heel clicking jig.

My youngest began 4^th grade today. He's sporting skater clothes and carefully plastered bangs. He spent 10 minutes brushing his teeth, and he was shivering with nervousness, like a Chihuahua, as we walked up to the bus stop. Last year's eager wave good-bye has turned into a self-conscious two-finger assignation. As for me, I just spent a half hour on my pages, got to the proverbial white space, and I'm reflecting on how lucky I am.

Having a school age brood is a milestone for any writer who has had to beg, trade and pay for childcare for her preschoolers. State-mandated public school is perhaps the single biggest perk of being a citizen of the United States of America. Ask any writer mom, during the summer months, what her daily average time with the page is. It'll hover between zero and five minutes. All that turns around on the Wednesday following Labor Day—which should be renamed I think. Given a Hallmark designate, even. National Back-to-Page Day. We parent-writers should be sending one another cards festooned with smiley faces. But then, that would just be another distraction, wouldn't it?

Okay, back to Dorothy's kitchen and the seven people therein.

dialog as connective tissue

Many a writing paradigm decrees that revealing plot via dialog is a cardinal sin. Nothing makes your characters sound more contrived than leading questions and answers obviously positioned to reveal stuff to the reader. And yet, you can't fill a book with characters speaking in a rhetorical fog. Something has to happen within discourse, right?

Yes and no.

Voice, personality, cadence, narrative texture: these are the take-aways when your characters chat it up on the page. It's about connective tissue. The substance that makes it possible for the reader to align with--to move with--the story.

Right now I've got seven characters in a kitchen. They have to talk, or not talk. They need to gesture, to fill the voids with physical business. The chasms between what they do and what they say can provide irony that moves the storyline forward. In these moments of irony, we can find out some things.

Dialog can be used the way emjambment is used in poetry: to subvert or heighten expectation, and thus create tension, or interest. You want to use dialog to open doors, rather than close them. You want the reader to glimpse a room she didn't know existed in the house she's exploring rather than providing the entire floorplan.

So. My seven odd characters are in a room, and within the course of this association, there needs to be a reveal. But it can't come from an answered question. Instead, it has to arrive via an unanswered question. That's today's challenge.

Moving forward vs looping back

I have not posted the updated word count to the margin of this blog because the little meter would be moving in the wrong direction. My progress has been in deleting unnecessary copy rather than generating new words. For the most part, anyway.

I was worried this would happen.

After Bread Loaf, I realized that my whole first section is replete with fat. Too many descriptors, too much explaining, too much boring backstory.

Shit.

I've axed the lion's share, and then gone back into it, like a surgeon replacing valves. I've had to rebuild the heart of this sucker. Set more pages in scene. Trust the reader, as Lynn Freed kept admonishing. Sink it!

So sink it, I have. Gone are three pages of Fifi's ruminations on art. Her long description of courting her husband. A page-and-a-half detailing the landscape of the Block Island Sound.

In their places are minimalist scenes and scant sections of dialogue. More action.

Finally, just today, I positioned my cursor at the bottom of page 128 and began to create new material. I'm in Dorothy Dick's kitchen, all her children and their significant others about, while she's stirring up some homemade eggnog. The kitchen is filthy, the scene, chaotic. I'm happy to be back in the mess of it all.

being a writer: new rules

Work on the novel each morning before engaging the Outlook. One hour, minimum. Do not visit this blog until that work is done.

Keep a notebook with me at all times.

Have at least 30 items in active submission at all times (I'm giving myself two weeks to ramp this up--currently, I have only 1).

Put any pressing duties onto a 3X5 card. If it fills up before noon, that means my life is too full of shit. Outsource or actively banish the items that spill over.

Exercise each afternoon. Create an interface after work and before home that involves sweat, and then take a half hour to edit the morning's writing.

Do not drink alcohol Sunday-Wednesday.

Drink more water, less coffee. French press instead Mr. Coffee.

Stop wasting time with too many transitions. See the whole picture of the day instead of the hour-by-hour of the day.

Don't forget my friends.

Don't forget my family.

Don't forget to be gracious.

Don't forget to tell my sweetheart I love him.

Don't dwell.

Do cut out the activities that feel like obligation.

Don't waste time on shitty people.

Keep piles at bay.

Buy a shredding machine.

Bread Loaf: the big take-aways

First, let me just say that Lynn Freed's workshop was phenomenal. I could not have had a more productive experience, both in terms of message and delivery. She embodies, I believe, the notion that when the student is ready, the teacher comes. Each and every one of us needed to hear advice, and all took it with enthusiasm and grace.

The dictate to "Trust the Reader" rang clearest. We all had too much explaining and exposition in our manuscripts. Even though I've been schooled against overly descriptive language, redundancy and authorial voice, my pages still contained plenty. Having fresh, discerning eyes peruse the pages with hatchet in hand helped me more than I can say.

Get rid of the loudspeaker. Move characters into scene. Banish the subjunctive. As soon, said Lynn's pencil on my page, as you find yourself sinking into the subjunctive for more than a sentence, stop and consider sinking it below the water line.

Of greatest use was the affirmation that the voice of the novel is fetching, that the characters are compelling, and that the setting is well drawn.

As for the rest of the conference: I liked it well enough. Admittedly, I did not attend as many lectures or classes as I should have, and perhaps I didn't mingle as much as I could have. I tended to stick to a merry little band of like-minded souls, with whom I talked shop.

I did get to have an illuminating conversation with Charlie Baxter though. During his reading I had an epiphany about my novel. And like many of my epiphanies, it vanished because I failed to write it down. I wanted to bring back this aha moment, so I sought him out during yesterday's lawn cocktails. Now, you have to know first of all how difficult this was for me. Baxter is one of my heroes. I go foggy-headed just trying to think about how to approach a guy like that. (I made a total ass of myself with Toni Nelson earlier in the week, and I certainly didn't want to repeat that!)

Anyway, I blathered some introductory word salad at first, but managed to gather myself enough to sort out the basis for the conversation. I mentioned what I thought he was trying to do in his story, and then told him what I was trying to do in mine, and we had one of those cool narrative distance chats, and he delivered the suggestion that I look at a Auster's Invention of Solitude, which I immediately Amazoned. Spot on that it starts in a third person musing and by paragraph two, the narrator is on the page. How he pulled that book out of the air for me after just a thirty second description of my opening chapter is a huge reason why Bread Loaf is worth the price of admission.

Pleiades Lake

Fabulous Bread Loaf day in every way. Hiked up to a wonderful lake, took a quick plunge and felt like a college student. I guess this is one of the great take-aways—the return to coed days of yore. And this time, I got to go to one of those smallish private New England colleges instead of the large, urban University I went to so many years ago.

Aside from the extra-curriculars, this mini immersion in writers' nirvana will linger and spread—and hopefully good work has begun to germinate already—just by osmosis.

As I mentioned last post, four of us in my writing workshop have spent time in the obscure little seaside town, setting of my book. What are the chances?

Then there was the wedding ring thing that happened today. One of our party was glancing down at the lake from a perch on the slick rocks above it when he noticed a man's wedding ring slightly submerged, six inches or so, in the lake. I was nearby, so I scooped it up, and handed it to him. We speculated as to its story. Was it left on a rock? Did it fall off a finger? Was it thrown into the drink by a sad, separated husband? See what happens when you get a bunch of writers together?

The discoverer of the ring put it in his pocket, with the intention of handing it over to the Bread Loaf staff, putting a note up in the lodge, or the Crumb newsletter. A bit presumptuous maybe, given that this wasn't Lake Bread Loaf, after all. Other Vermonters occasionally swim here too. But, never the less, it seemed likely that the owner might have some association with the college.

Fast forward a few hours. I'm at the Gala cocktail party sucking down a Bloody Mary, and Canadian Ken (my name for him to distinguish him from Portland Ken), inquires about my day. "It was terrific," I told him, "I went to the lake."

"Oh," he said. And then, in an ironic tone he asked if I happened to see something round and shiny there.

"Oh. My. God."

"I went swimming and I lost my wedding ring."

What are the chances?

Now, that's one little coincidence, but an even bigger one is that the guy who found his ring is also the guy who answered the Bread Loaf trivia question posed on the first day: find the book and the page number of the following passage, trivia question. And he managed to find the answer to that trivia question while paging through Canadian Ken's book. So, as was pointed out, those guys will be forever cosmically connected.

It's just a magic place.

swine loaf

Today The Secret to Love was workshopped, and I got to read the opening chapter at the Blue Parlor Reading. I'm still filtering all the info from workshop--some of it resonated, some of it just was, as is the case at these things, writerly reactions--micro edits. On the whole, I think the chapters were well-received, and the votes seem to indicate that Ursula is more sympathetic than Fifi (good), and that Grandmother's the bomb. (Very good.) I got some terrific feedback on what to tweak in the opening few pages, and I tinkered with it before the reading.

After the reading, I got to partake in the devouring of that attractive creature under the cookie tray. Now, I know the idea of a roast pig is somewhat exotic and belies a certain fanciness, but the actual set up, gutting, roasting and slicing of poor little piggy is, well, barbaric. Luckily, Bread Loaf had plenty of garden burgers and beans as substitute. And the key lime pie was fabulous.

But, back to the reading. The theme for tonight was love, and there were ten or so readers. The room was packed with supportive Loafers, and the spirit, as usual, was on the high side. There was bad wine and Chex mix for all. It was fun to read chapter one in its latest form. It's one of those passages with shock value and humor. The double whammy of fail-safe reading.

Anyone who thinks that Bread Loaf is this elite haven for mfa's and wealthy wanna-be's doesn't have the true picture. Yeah, there's a bit of money up here (4, count 'em 4 of my workshop mates knew Watch Hill--the exclusive Rhode Island backdrop of my novel--intimately), and plenty of writers from academe, but I've been impressed, and more than a bit surprised by what happens when you put this many people together in a secluded setting when the only true common denominator is a passion for writing.

After the reading, the pig roast and the key lime pie, there was a fiddler and his son in the barn. This 13-year old boy was phenominal. Think Joshua Bell phenominal. He got a standing ovation (the first at this year's Bread Loaf). It made me wonder if these writers' conferences oughtent have more inter-disciplinary arts. My roommate thinks we should have a workshop where we make a collaborative play and then perform it.

Hey, after ten days of readings, our ears are sore and our heads are full. Things begin to blend. We begin to feel like that cookie sheet, wanting to cover something--preferrably any blowhard writer that reads over his alotted time.

In the end, though, the real litmus test is on the page. At writing camp, words and the particular way they're strung together are the grail objects. We want, when we wind down the mountain to our respective ports and cities, to feel that our words will reward us. Even if just with their song--that in rereading them we feel satisfied and propelled forward.

When it works, this writers' conference thing, a writer goes home feeling like she wants to continue writing. Even if she's told that her character's voice is inauthentic, or the dialogue is contrived, or that there are too many examples of summary in her narrative. If we get feedback that a scene has erupted in that wonderful personal way that causes a reader to fully enter the story, that's worth the price of admission.

the secret to love, part III

Sitting in another craft class this afternoon, I got out my tiny little notebook and figured out the last third of Secret to Love. Plot-wise, in any case.

The combination of steeping my consciousness in story vs plot (sequence vs sequence w/ causality), and having both Eve and an agent I chatted with ask me a couple of smart questions after hearing my spiel, simplified the whole explosion-change-end result maneuver I'd been churning around for some time.

Frances, my beleaguered heroine, has been operating under false guidance. Her grandmother set her on a quest with bad advice at the beginning of the book: find a husband who can stand up to you. Who can boss you. And at the end of the book, Frances finds herself in a similar wisdom-dispensing situation. Her advice, of course, will refute Grandmother's. It will be this little act, this realization that she has reached a position where she knows how to answer a fundamental query on the nature of meaning, of love, that causes the shift.

plotting

I attended a really great craft workshop today given by Margo Rabb. It was a workshop on plotting specifically tailored to novel writers. Though I didn't agree with every suggestion, some of the most helpful included:

1. When considering a new idea for a novel, write the first 30 to 50 pages without revising and then assess the material as worthy or not
   
2. Keep a character notebook
   
3. Write a two-page plot treatment, written in the style of telling someone what the book's about
   
4. Write a list of scenes connecting the beginning to the climax to the end
   
5. Be able to describe your novel in one sentence
   

Another idea presented was, in plotting the book, know the ending, and work backwards. Not sure that one will work for me. For one thing, though I don't have a good idea about what will happen exactly, I have a very clear picture of what I want to accomplish in service to the emotional triumph of the characters. I worry that if I impose a plot point on that triumph, it'll be contrived.

As far as a character notebook, I do have character 3X5s that I've long since misplaced. I think a small notebook that I keep on my person is a great idea, actually, and one I've resisted only because it's one more thing to remember. I have noticed many a fellow writer here at the camp extracting small notebooks for a variety of reasons. Maybe I'm just too arrogant, and I think that I'll remember my random thoughts and overheard dialogue. Many times I do, but just as many, when trying to recall something that got me all excited earlier in the day, I draw a blank.

In any case, I'm going to do a 2-page plot sketch, just for fun. Maybe I'll even come up with an ending.

the second deadly sin

I'm going to have a hard time remembering that in real life you don't get served three meals a day, there's no robust salad bar from which to heap your plate, and dessert should be the exception after breakfast, not the rule.

Seriously, I'm eating like a pig. Add the wine and cheese and bloody Mary receptions and I'm going to have to go into major gluttony detox.

bread loaf day ?

That bunch of logs back there? That's where Robert Frost spent many a miserable summer day, holed up with depression and his pen and his paper while the trees outside whistled and cracked.

I love Frost's poetry, even though I'm only familiar with a skim of his work. My grandfather, Helmut, used to read them to me from "Stopping by Woods…," the hardback with all the line sketches. It so happened that the very edition was on a shelf inside that cabin. I picked it up and got sucked into a quick hole of memory. I smelled the book, stroked its tattered cover.

Although surrounded by the very alive, vibrant Bread Loaf Conference-goers, I felt quiet and elegiac during this field trip. Sort of contemplative. Mostly dull. Earlier today I got an email inviting me to the memorial service of a man whose death came as a surprise to me. The very colorful Patrick McAuliffe, client and friend, a man who'd once hired me to help him write his memoir—the unsinkable, or so I thought, Patrick, was dead. Robert Frost, dead. My grandfather, Helmut, also dead.

A local Frost scholar, Jay Parini, gave a talk on the history of the cabin and the lower house, which make up what's known in these parts as the Homer Noble Farm. As a Pofessor of English at Middlebury College, Parini gives this docent lecture a lot. But he was anything but rote in his delivery. He made Frost a real man as he described his struggles, background and allegiance to the earth. Of particular color was a recent punishment he, Parini, was asked to carry out. Seems a group of high school kids broke into the lower house and wrought havoc over the winter, downing huge quantities of beer while trashing the historic home. In lieu of jail, the kids were sentenced to Frost seminars taught by Parini, where they had an object lesson in what "The Road Not Taken" might mean.

This is the lie-low day at Bread Loaf. Catch up on rest, reading and writing. For me, it's a sad day. I'm homesick. I miss my sweetheart and my children. And I will miss the occasional enthusiastic, unintelligible phone call from my good friend Pat.

respite

I understand it's 100 degrees at home. Here, in the foothills of Vermont's Green Mountains, it's a pleasant 72.

I feel as if I've been transported to a parallel planet. Meatloaf (as my boyfriend jokingly referred to this place in an email) is almost surreal in its setting. Rolling green hills and moose sightings aside, there is just enough of the remote to subvert the paradigm. Cell phones don't work here, so no need to take up the first minute of each meeting with an admonition to turn them off. Showers must be staggered, because the ratio of residents to stall is several to one. As though we suddenly belong to a family of ten, we must relearn to share, take our turns, be patient.

The only elbowing and vying and, dare I say, aggressive behavior is at the bulletin board near the Victorian blue parlour where one can sign up to read on a ten-slot list. I'm on the waiting list for tomorrow, aced out of yesterday and today by being incidental in my meanderings rather than deliberate.

The agent and editor meetings take place on wide porches at civilized hours, and everyone seems so happy to be here instead of in their regular lives, that one almost forgets the point of the meetings. Grace seems to be the frontrunner here, purpose only slipping in around the edges. I'm feeling a lot of suspended will, forgotten agenda and subverted bravado around me. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Cheryl Strayed aptly described Bread Loaf as summer camp for writers, and now I know what she meant by that. The usual intensity of writing conferences is mitigated by space, anachronism and the lack of strong coffee.

Everyone could do with a little meatloaf in their lives, I think. Served up at room temperature.

 

walking through dirt on a sunny morning

Lynn Freed gave us an assignment yesterday. We have to write an opening sentence. Nothing scuttles the cobwebs occluding creativity as much as a sweaty hike through foreign soil, so, armed with my state-of-the-art 3.2 mega pixel camera and a head full of cotton, off I went into moose country.

Three-quarter miles down the road this line occurred to me:

We used to sit beside one another, the lot of us, and compare our knees for tanness: Corey, Deborah, Inga, me, and a little fag named Joe.

Okay then. Nice sound, rhythm, all of that, but inserting "fag" as a blackout, well, immediately I began the argument with myself. Can I say fag? And if so, what promise have I made the reader upon which I now must deliver?

So I amended the sentence:

We used to sit beside one another, the lot of us, and compare our knees for tanness: Corey, Deborah, Inga, me, and a little tramp named Jo.

It so happens that I just shared a lunch table with a poet and I spoke of this dilemma. I think he thinks I copped out. "the fag line tells the reader a lot more," he said, shaking his head.

Damn it!

hardscrabble

"The mosquito is the new state bird," said the Middlebury transit driver who negotiated us around the various washed out roads and bridges between Burlington and Bread Loaf. "It's rained 40 days straight."

After 24 hours here, I've concluded that Vermonters are exceptionally precise. The careful way they speak is only matched by the considered way that they listen. Most remarkable is that they don't seem to mind that the rest of the world does it differently. I was sitting up front with the driver and the other 7 passengers were in an ebullient huddle behind us, chatting quickly and with hyperbolic animation and the driver seemed genuinely pleased to be in the midst of our cacophony.

We passed a road called Hardscrabble, and I chuckled. The driver said, "You'll find that things are generally named for what they are around here." When we turned onto a road called "Burpee" I said, "So, is that named after the seed company or the tendency to produce gas."

"Well," he said, after a Vermont sized pause, "seeing as there's a sewer pipe industry here, I'd say the latter."

Burlington

The airport in Burlington, VT is in the middle of a neighborhood. Weird. Like PDX, but smaller, quainter. I'm at the Holiday Inn for the evening after a day of uneventful air travel. Uneventful except for the last few minutes of flight over Vermont when turbulence sucked the plane down freakishly causing many a traveler to scream. They were the short sort of screams, the type muttered without thought and quickly rescinded. The turbo prop carrier in which we bounced immediately corrected itself after all, and, plus, the plane wasn't about to go down full as it was with forthright New Englanders.

Best was I caught up on all my New Yorkers which had been brimming the bill basket since April. I read a great TC Boyle story and an even better essay by Saunders. I'm priming the pump. Yes I am.

Now I'll pop into the hotel restaurant for a bite with a brand new colleague and friend, Ken, another writer-ambassador from Portland. We have to set up a game plan for west coast solidarity in the face of all the greatness that awaits.

Oh, and good news: neither the bottle of Tanqueray nor my French press broke en route!

Bread Loaf 2008

I'm off to Bread Loaf tomorrow, and I have 130 pages of my novel to pore over en route. I know I've changed a few characters' names here and there, and I'm sure to step over many first draft inconsistencies. With a goal of feeling completely saturated by The Secret to Love by the time I'm installed in my Vermont hideaway, pen in hand, here I go.

Wi-fi permitting, I shall report from "the road."