"It's summer! Do you take vacations
from writing? What vacation spot has been most inspiring to your writing?"
My vacations and
writing life spill happily back and forth. I am never – and always – on
vacation, a perception that stems from having had desk jobs and a consulting
practice for a few decades and feeling that life these days as a writer is an
amazing gift to myself.
Right now, I’m
polishing the revisions my agent asked me to make on a new manuscript set in
rural France. The inspiration came during a visit to the village where two of
my American friends went to live permanently on a whim. The first time I
visited, strictly for fun, I learned about a petty scandal that was causing
rifts among the people who lived in the town. It reminded me so much of a Jane
Austen plot that bells and lights went off in my head.
It was while on
another supposedly pure vacation, this time in Kauai, that I finished the first
draft of the book. Barred from the beach between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to preserve
some skin health, I wrote for six hours every day for almost three weeks.
Ah, you’re
saying, you got to write off your vacations! Clever you! Actually, I didn’t
attempt to do that for either of these, although I later spent lots of time in
the area my story is set in, photographing things like the town dump, the
abandoned quarry, the little streets that peter out, the white cows. And
tasting and collecting examples of the food that region – the Yonne in Burgundy
– produces and what my characters would eat every day, the lucky people. For
the true research trips, my accountant agreed some deductions were legitimate.
He did suggest, mildly in his appealing Irish accent, that I might better focus
on earnings so that there was something to deduct from.
Right now, I’m
working hard, no trips in sight, two different deadlines in front of me: the
French book revision to the agent in a few weeks; planning the new upcoming Dani O’Rourke mystery rollout for a February 2 launch. But this work is vacation
compared to sitting in endless meetings with academic deans, university
presidents, and anxious fundraisers.
I hope your summer is at least as much fun!
4 comments:
Love the pix of your vacation spots, Susan. And also when you say "I am never – and always – on vacation..." I think as writers we're never really on vacation, are we? Even if it doesn't look like we're working, even if we're sitting on the beach in Maui, sipping a tropical drink on a sultry day, we are still working...aren't we?
I just came back from a lovely vacation where I snuck away in the afternoons to write... Getting time to write feels like such a gift!
Yes, Paul, we are always working, witness Meredith's comment.
Susan, I'm so envious of your France and Kauai vacations. But I'm afraid when I go on vacation, I go on vacation and rarely give my writing a second thought.
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