You know you haven’t blogged in awhile when you can’t even remember how to log in. I’m writing this in word, hoping to figure things out later when my eyes aren’t bleary from the road.
Just back from our summer vacation in Maine. Some good camping and only one long rain storm that left my sleeping bag a little soggy because the fly on our tent doesn’t stick out far enough. We also spent a night in what I have dubbed The Rich People’s Hotel, mostly because they kept jugs of water in the lobby, flavored with strawberries and cantaloupe and lemon. And because it was expensive. (You can afford one night in The Rich People’s Hotel if you camp because camping is only $20.)
My favorite spot was New Harbor, which we visited on the recommendation of one of my husband’s archivist friends. We went on a Puffin Cruise and ate dinner at the amazing Shaw’s. The next morning we checked out the lighthouse that appears on the Maine quarter after a breakfast of pancakes with wild blueberries.
I’d started working on a new middle grade novel just before the trip, one that I was (and am) super excited about. It draws on a lot of things from my childhood, more so than other stories I’ve written. I can’t wait to go back to Valley View Drive in my mind. But while I was on the trip I started thinking about a novel I’d started writing a few years ago and couldn’t quite finish. I stopped somewhere just before the middle, when things were getting complicated. That novel happens to be set in Maine and there I was with the lupine growing by the roadways and people hawking mussels and blueberries and the lady at the post office counting the days until the tourists left. The water was clear and the message in my brain was clear, too: I have to finish that story. So I took copious notes. I looked and listened. I found some crab claws in a tide pool, which I tried to bring back with me because crab claws figure prominently in this story and I needed to know how long it took them to dry out and stiffen. Only they made the trunk smell horrible and my children couldn’t go around in Crab Clothes all week. I abandoned them in Portland. (The crab claws, not the children.) Now I’m home again and I’m still not sure what to write next.
Both stories, I know that. But which comes first? They both keep rolling in front of me, plots and characters, Virginia and Maine. Waves of mountains. Mountains of waves. 