Category: The Wandering Writer

Riding the Rails

I have long been a big fan of train travel. Back when I lived in Charlottesville, I spent a lot of time on the Vermonter, the train that runs up into New England and stops 10 minutes from my daughter’s old home in New Hampshire. I also took the train into New York on several occasions. The fare is often reasonable (even in business class), there’s no long security line, and you can take your bags on the train with you. Obviously you’ll be on the rails longer than you would be in the air, but if you fly, once you factor in getting to the airport several hours before take-off, layovers in crowded airports, and the long process of disembarking and getting your bags, it usually ends up taking about the same amount of time door-to-door. And trains can continue to run when flights are cancelled because of weather. Several years ago right after a huge snowstorm I made my way on the Vermonter to NH for Christmas when all the flights in C’Ville were cancelled for days.

The best part of train travel for me, though, is the incredible amount of work I’m able to get done. I find I’m super prolific when I’m on a train. I can’t sit for 8 hours and type on a plane. On a train I can turn on my laptop the minute I get in my seat, and not turn it off until I’m at my destination. I’m not interrupted by beverage carts and seatmates pushing past me to go to the bathroom (I’ve almost always had a row to myself), I don’t have to waste time packing and unpacking my laptop to change planes, and there is actually enough space to use a laptop. If I need a change of scenery, I can go sit in the café car for a while and work there. It’s usually quiet in business class, but if it happens to be noisy, I can always go work in the quiet car.

I have a trip booked to Charlottesville on Amtrak soon, and I’m stoked. I haven’t hit the rails from Charleston before, so I’m looking forward to seeing the view from the windows through SC and NC to VA. And I’m looking forward to the bonus writing time. One of these days I’ve promised myself a cross-country train trip, but for now I’ll have to be satisfied with an up-the-eastern-seaboard jaunt.

Miss Me?

Wow, has it really been two months?  That is definitely the longest I’ve gone without posting since I started this blog several years ago.  No excuses.  Instead, a pictorial post of what I was up to the last half of the summer that kept me from my computer.

Beachpool

toes

books

Oh, I’ve done some writing too, but I’m never particularly productive in the summer.  Then, usually sometime around the beginning of Fall, I get a surge of creative energy, and I’m back at my computer willingly, not just putting in time but excited by it.  As I am right now.

I also get the travel itch, best scratched by a residency. Residencies cover the travel itch and the writing one in the same trip.  This year residencies have been put on hold, but I will be doing some traveling, to C’Ville at least, and plenty of writing.  And you can expect to see more of me here than you have during those lazy hazy crazy days of summer.

Life as a Canvas

When I write, I often develop extremely detailed histories for my characters.  I’ve always wanted to understand what makes people act and react the ways that they do, what in their past forms who they are, and my characters are no different.  So I create complicated lives for them and their families, and along the way I also acquire compassion for even the most unlikable characters.  I begin to feel empathy for them.

This exercise is nothing new for me.  I’ve always liked to sit in restaurants and make up convoluted stories about the people dining around me.  I do it for fellow airline passengers.  I do it for people I’ve never met, and for those I have met but just can’t seem to get a handle on.  It’s pretty lame as hobbies go, but most hobbies writers have are pretty lame in comparison to alligator wrestlers and sky divers and bullfighters.  We tend to play in our heads. (With the exception of Ernest Hemingway, of course.)

I decided to try out this little exercise on myself, treating Christy Strick as an undiscovered character.  Of course most of it is my history, known to me, but then I began to take known facts and turn them upside down.  I invented a new father, one who would not run away from the responsibilities of a family with four children under the age of 8.  One who loved me from afar though he couldn’t claim me.  (This little fantasy  would surely make my mother crazy.)

Most of my family contributed without me having to embellish, of course.  My mother, who taught me sacrifice and told me that I was special (which I still believe to this day, despite evidence to the contrary.) My maternal grandfather, whom I have mentioned before, who passed along to me his passion for learning, a lifelong curiosity, and a craving for travel as we read his National Geographics and World Book Encyclopedias cover to cover.  My paternal grandfather showed me what it is to be a courtly gentleman, a man’s man who smoked pipes and played golf and drank cocktails every evening.  And did it looking like an aging movie star.    My paternal grandmother who passed on to me a love of art, and beauty in nature, and the importance of good manners.  My maternal grandmother, who taught me about duty, and hard work, and determination as she slaved in a blue jean factory to make ends meet. And my great grandfather Bob, who lived to be 99, showed me the dignity that could be found in aging gracefully.  My aunts, Marie and Jerry and Carol, who always believed I was special and let me know it.  And lastly, my daughters, who are smart and funny and teach me things about myself every day.

Of course these are the good things.  I also learned from some of the people in my life to be wary, to not open up or trust too easily.

I think of life as a great big canvas, with people who touch our lives adding paint here and there, layer upon layer of interactions that change the picture constantly, sometimes with just one encounter, one stoke of the brush.  Each death, each love affair, each supportive teacher or mean girl, they all add color and depth to the canvas.  The only question is whether at the end of that life, the canvas will hold more yellow and blues and greens or more reds and black.

I’m thinking about painting a canvas about the character’s life I am working on right now, a sort of abstraction of life.  Maybe it will be the cover of this novel.  Maybe no one will ever see it but me.  But I’m visual, and I like the idea of making art out of a life.  Which is what we do as writers every day on paper.  The canvas is just my extension of that.