When the Writer Can't Write -- Nonfiction

image from Harvard Business Review

Yep. I've got post-surgery, drug-induced writer's block.

The surgery went well. Rehab is coming along. Ten days in and counting. I still have trouble putting thoughts together in any consistently coherent way. A writer can't write if they can't think.

I can't stand another moment in front of the TV. TV News? My thinking is so muddled, I can't even maintain appropriate depression. Daytime TV? All those talk shows? They're just so much noise. Those folks are less coherent than what's going on in my head. Nighttime TV? There is PBS, but I can't seem to keep up with anything. Except the cooking and travel shows. Even with them, I tend to dose off which, admittedly, is not terribly unusual for me. But this is ridiculous.

I have been reading. Finished A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I did just fine with it. Of course it's my third time through and I'm thoroughly familiar with the umpteen characters. And Memory is 885 pages of the "Last Battle." How could anyone get confused about what's going on there?

I still was not ready to write. So the thing to do was to start another series that I've read before -- so I don't have to figure out who's who or what's going on.

John LesCroart's Dismas Hardy series. Unlike Wheel of Time, each book is a complete crime fiction story. But you need to start with the first one, because the stories are in the same world with the same characters. The thing I like about them is that the well-developed characters live and change as the stories go along. I have a vested interest in them.

So last night I started Dead Irish. Also, it was my second try at sleeping in my bed after the surgery. I haven't been able to get comfortable sleeping lying down. I've been sleeping in a recliner. So...I took the book, cuddled down in my bed, next to my warm husband, and prepared to read myself to sleep.

He likes to read himself to sleep, too. Normally, I am courteous enough not to interfere.

I'm reading along quite happily when I come to this paragraph:

       "In a way, he thought it was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. There would have
        been some symmetry in that -- both of his parents had died in a plane crash when
        he'd been nineteen a sophomore at Cal Tech."

My mind kicked into editor mode.

"Listen to this," I said interrupting Scott's reading. He didn't care about the crime novel I was reading. But he's in his care-giver mode right now. He's a nice man. He'd've been courteous regardless of my medical situation.

Anyway I read him the paragraph as Mr. LesCroart wrote it. And proceeded to followup with the wording I thought the writer should have used. And why.

        "It was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. (No need for the attribution. It was third person close. Obviously, we were inside the main character's head.) There would have been symmetry in that -- his parents died in a plane crash when he was a nineteen-year-old Cal Tech sophomore. (Fewer words, same information. Stronger language.)"

"Hmmm," my husband said.

For several days now, I've been verbally rewriting the dialog on TV commercials. And in syndicated episodes of  Blue Bloods, one of Scott's favorite TV shows.

If a writer can't write, there is only one alternative. Edit!

I think my husband is going to be glad when I've completed rehab and started writing again. Maybe then he can watch his shows and read in peace.

Trail Riding with Scott in His Toy

   

                                            Before                                      After

Some while ago my husband Scott decided he wanted a 4-Wheeler. He asked if I might be interested in riding the mountain trails with him. If my answer were "yes," he would buy a side-by-side ATV. If my answer were "no," he would buy the standard motor-cycle style 4-wheeler.

As you can see, I said "Yes." It was a good answer when he asked me to marry him and it was still a good answer for riding with him in an ATV.

When he first got it, it was what you see in the Before picture -- It had four wheels, two seats with seat belts, roll-bars, a flat bed, head lamps, a steering wheel -- the standard stuff. Turn the man loose with his tools and it's got a roof, a windshield, side rails on the bed, heavy-duty front and rear bumpers, a winch, serious back-up lights, overhead spot-lights, and ways and means of attaching everything you could possible need out back of beyond.

In July, he took it for a shake-down run by himself to see how it did. Last Wednesday he took me with him. (I guess to see how I'd do.)

Everything went fine. We took I-70 west through Idaho Springs then turned off on Chicago Creek Road, a road I'm familiar with because we use it to get to Mount Evans, my second favorite 14er. (If it had a restaurant at the top that made high altitude donuts, it would move ahead of Pike's Peak.) That road is a well-maintained, paved, two-lane highway. We were trailering the Toy behind my husband's pickup. And all was going well.

Our goal, however, was Saxon Mountain, so we turned onto Cascade Creek Road. Well-maintained, not paved. And one-lane. It is curvy, with trees and/or the mountain coming right down to the road's edge on my side and the creek at the bottom of a drop-off on his side. "So," I wondered silently. "What do we do if we meet someone coming the other way?" Backing that truck and trailer down a narrow road with no forgiveness on either side could not be a good idea. And there were no lay-bys.

As it turns out, I never found out what we would do, 'cause nobody came the other way.

We unloaded and buckled up. He set the way-point for where we were starting, consulted his map, and entered the coordinates for the first place he wanted to go into his GPS. It was like space travel will be, set the coordinates and go. Of course with space flight, you won't have to worry about switch-backs or mundane obstacles. You know -- falling rock, streams, downed trees. I figured our way would at least be free of rogue asteroids and meteors.

After our first switch-back we came to this abandoned mine.

Gold was discovered here in 1866. After gold, they discovered silver. So Saxon Mountain is pocked with mines. Most of the mines are collapsed and filled-in vertical shafts. This one goes into the mountain horizontally, at least as far as we could see, looking through the gate. The second structure is across the trail. I believe it housed the stamp mill.

   

                                             and this was the miner's home-sweet-home.

While doing a bit of research on mining in Colorado I happened onto the website for Mountain Magazine with an article that includes a first-hand account of mining in Colorado's high country in the 1890's from Carl Fulton. It's not long and it's worth taking the time to read, if you're interested in what life was like back then.

We saw a bachelor herd of Mule Deer. They'll soon be seeking the does for fall breeding season, at least the ones who are old enough. There were several spikes with the more mature bucks. We saw Clark's Nutcrackers. They're Corvidae like crows and jays. And I saw my first grouse in the wild, a Dusky Grouse. And, that old standby, the robin.

There were beaucoup chipmunks and little dark-colored squirrels. Sorry, no photos of wildlife. The ATV on that trail was too energetic to allow photography and when we'd stop, the wildlife fled.

               

In the mountains, it's all about the light.            And just because we're in the back-

               Still photography doesn't do the Aspens           country, that doesn't mean there's no

               justice. Any little breeze sets the leaves            civilization. There were street signs.
               to fluttering, flashing now silver, now
               green.                                                                                                                               

                               The meadows were still sporting their wild flowers.

  

Indian Paint Brush and Dwarf                       Silvery Lupine        

                              Golden Aster                                                                                  

 

Ahhhh, but the summit. It's over 11,000 feet. That's where the vistas and wildflowers are breathtaking. Down in the valley -- 3,000 feet down, to be more precise -- is I-70 snaking around to the right. And the buildings and things more to the center of the picture is Georgetown.

A Bristlecone Pine

The yellow blooms are Nodding Groundsel and the pale purple are Alpine Daisy

We came down different trails than we used going up. They were even more extreme. We had one scary, near-rollover which my husband handled by going pale and telling me, "Lean that way!" I responded with "I already am!" We held steady tipped like that for three hours or a fraction of a second. He let the Toy settle itself and we went on our merry way.

It was a 20-mile, six hour trip. I got home exhausted, My arms hurt from holding on. At times it was like shooting the rapids on a river. It was thrilling and I know exactly how Rose Sayer felt on the African Queen.

I learned some very important things. The Toy is both powerful and very stable. My husband is a capable, prudent man, and my life is safe in his hands.

This is not a Review, but a Confession



  
     I confess, I do not often read those short synopses on the back cover of books or in the descriptions on Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites. I read books that someone I know recommends or if I hear an interview with the author on NPR or if I've read everything an author has written and finally they come out with a new book. Consequently I usually read books without any foreknowledge of their specific content. And, if I've never read that author before, I'm a complete innocent.

     Another confession -- I have recently learned that I don't have to finish a book just because I start one. There are may other things that have always been extreme guilt producers. Forgetting to use coupons I take to the store, not brushing my teeth at night, damaging a book whether accidentally or intentionally, leaving the laundry in the washing machine long enough that it smells spoiled, etc., etc.

     My husband recently recommended The Art of Racing in the Rain. He reads voraciously but recommends books to me sparingly. Mostly nonfiction – narrative histories, popular science, that sort of thing. Our tastes in literature are as different from each other as are our politics.

     So when he said he thought I would like The Art of Racing in the Rain, I started it right away, completely unaware of its story line. Early on I began to think the story was written from the dog’s point of view, but my husband hates movies with talking animals, so I thought surely this book takes a twist and changes to a human’s point of view. And surely it would be in the next few pages.

     Finally, too many pages into the book, I hesitantly asked my husband (whom I want to continue to recommend books to me) if the whole book is written from the dog’s point of view. And he, equally hesitant (because he likes me to like things he likes even though he knows that is not always going to happen) told me “yes, pretty much.”

      So I confessed that I was stopping reading it right there. I explained that I have problems with the willing suspention of disbelief. That’s why I don’t like stories with vampires and ghosts and books from any animal’s point of view.

      He smirked at me and said, “Like that 300 page plus book you just finished writing about a murder that takes place on an asteroid with women who are pregnant for thirteen months and it only takes 40 days to travel from Ceres to Earth?”

      Busted!