RETURNING HOME

I'm home! I did the 4,500-kilometer trip in three days--a record. The first night took me to the Lake Superior area of Ontario with lots of tiny, dingy motels. I could have stopped at one, but I pulled over at a car lot in Nipigon. (If I'm sleeping in the car, car lots are great because I don't stand out when I'm surrounded by other vehicles.) Well, it was very cold so I got back on the road after two hours and drove through the night, remaining vigilant for moose and other wildlife. (“Moose on the Loose” at “Moose at Night” signs pop up every five minutes on the route and I drove under the speed limit, ready to brake or swerve should a critter appear.)

For the second night, I was in the middle of Saskatchewan and stopped in three towns, looking for a cheap motel. The first town had the most disgusting looking hotel I've ever seen--worse than The Patricia on Hastings in Vancouver’s skid row area, a hotel an L.A. travel agent unwittingly booked me into during my first visit to the city. There was no room at the inn at the next two stops. I parked in an auto body lot, spitting distance from an incredibly active nighttime railroad track, and tossed and turned from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. when my dog Lincoln decided it was time to throw up. (I learned from the trip to the cottage and got him out of the car on time.) At some point in my "sleep", I mysteriously managed to break a middle toe which swelled up. Plenty awake, I washed my hair using a water bottle and hit the road again.

That's when I realized I had a shot of making it home in a three-day marathon. I was a crazed driver! Construction work in Calgary--at both ends!--and around Banff put me on edge--the dogs might say over the edge--and getting stuck behind camper vehicles for long stretches through the Rockies made matters worse. I had given myself a couple of hours leeway to catch the final ferry home (9:15), but that time seemed to be ticking away.

Thank goodness for the Coquihalla Highway which runs for nearly two hundred kilometers between Kamloops and Hope, B.C.! It is like a raceway. Cars whizzed past me when I was doing 130 (or more). Bring on more of our own Autobahns!

Despite my fretting, I realized I had a (remote) shot of making the 7:25 sailing. Drawing on my newly acquired race driver experience, I zigzagged through traffic as I neared Vancouver and got to the terminal three minutes before the cutoff. What a bonus to arrive home a day early!

I am feeling surprisingly alert today and the dogs are relieved to be home, reacquainting themselves with their favorite lounging spots. My butt feels bruised from such long periods of sitting and I have officially ruled out truck driver as my next career. Now I have nothing left to fall back on if I can’t make it as a writer. I have no choice but to write!

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

With a few stalls along the way, I have spent the past two months steadily plugging away on a novel for adult readers. I’m in the middle of the story and I seem to be stuck. It is not cause for panic or despair yet. Concern? Sure.

I love reading interviews and attending author readings to learn about their writing process. What I have learned is there is not a right way to write—although some authors give me the impression that they are so married to their chosen process that they feel it is only way, not just for themselves but for others.

Maybe it’s because I’m a tangential thinker with adult-onset Attention Deficit Disorder, but I believe the process has to feel organic to the writer and to his or her particular project. Process can change—sometimes must change due to unexpected factors—along the way. Often (note, not always) when I write, the characters come first. Then a problem comes to mind and I jump into writing the first draft. When I try to be more disciplined and outline the story, I often feel the energy drying up. For me, the journey is led by the characters and changes course from my initial, loosely conceived vision.

The genesis of this project came during my four-day drive across the Canadian Prairies and Northern Ontario. I kept my microcassette player on the dashboard and recorded the flurry of ideas as they came. It was an exciting process that fit my circumstance and I couldn’t wait to sort through the ideas once I could sit down at the cottage and open up my laptop. Not all the ideas were great; after all, I forwent hotels and “slept” in the car. Catnapped might be a better term.

For this novel, I even knew the ending and the basic story progression before I began. I thought I was ahead of the game and would skirt any of my typical feelings that the story was dragging in the middling section. Alas. Despite a little more forethought in planning, I am in familiar, unpleasant territory where I am trying to regain story momentum. I think this is the point where some authors abandon a project or shelve it for years.