Staycation

Staycation. Boy, do I hate that word. Mostly because it means I didn’t go on a vacation, which, let’s face it, is what I long for as soon as I’ve finished my previous vacation.

Unfortunately, the world is different this year—maybe you noticed—so we did our best to stay in vacation mode here at home…from quitting time on Friday straight through until right now. I did my bit: nine days of reading and writing. The reading (Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch) was outstanding. The writing? We will see:

Every morning I brought my beach chair out onto the deck and got to it. Head down; eyes on my notebook; actual pen on actual paper. I put away keyboards of all shapes and sizes. The writing is different when the first draft is on paper. Not better, not worse. [Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “different”? (See paragraph two.)] For eight days I wrote many words on many pages, hoping the words, separated by the appropriate punctuation marks and paragraph breaks, would ultimately be arranged in an interesting way.

But the head isn’t down all the time. Every few minutes I’d look up. There was no stiff North Carolina breeze coming off the ocean, only a paltry wind nudging the leaves of the Black Walnut trees in the back yard. There were no pelicans dive bombing for fish beyond the first row of breakers on the Atlantic, just squirrels running along the edge of the yard, occasionally climbing to a perch on the railing—shocked to see some dude on the usually barren deck. Thankfully the disappointment of not being at my beloved Outer Banks eased when I returned to my notebook, and I’d scratch out a few more paragraphs—lost in a world of make believe.

The goal was a short story, started and completed in one week. I didn’t quite get there. Along the way I discovered a few interesting characters I didn’t know existed until my hand had physically written it, and I thought, Huh? Who knew that was going to happen? (By the way, that is one of the absolute joys of writing.)

But right now, it is still Sunday morning, the last day of my (oh, what the hell)staycation, and I am itching to get off this computer and go back to my paper and pen. So that’s where I’m headed. There’s a final scene to write, and I’m interested to see how it all turns out.