A Writers Vacation

Pause Beethoven, or at least someone playing his music. It is time to write, and for this post, to write about writing. As I mentioned in a recent post (Defiance) on my oldest blog,

“I expected to take a few days to write for my self, writing about things that are so personal that I won’t share them, but things that are so important that I needed them said – or at least written and read by me.”

Regular readers have probably realized that I write a lot. Writing so much has less to do with wanting to be heard and more to do with responding to people who want to read what I write. 

Here’s the link to the current list of my self-published books (currently on Amazon because their monopoly means there is no effective alternative): https://www.amazon.com/stores/T.-E.-Trimbath/author/B0035XVXAA

Here’s the current list of my active blogs, including a podcast:

• TrimbathCreative.net – personalized personal finance (first person)
• PretendingNotToPanic.com – news that is significant, factual, and apolitical (third person)
• TomTheWriter.com – fiction & non-fiction, journalism to books, process and philosophy (first person)
• MyTinyExperiment.com – an old guy in a big tiny house (first person)
• IntriguingCreativity.com – Steve Smolinksy and me and the world (two first persons? people?)

Asking WordPress, I can include six other sites that languish until needed, e.g., walkthinkdrinkscotland.wordpress.com, the site for my 2010 book, Walking Thinking Drinking Across Scotland, which I revive whenever interest in it occasionally resurfaces.

Add my various paid gigs (engineering, real estate, etc.), and my estimate exceeds three million words out there.

Great. Busy. Productive.

But there are some things to write that are private conversations, concepts and insights that are so private that most of them may never be shared. Writing is one way to express myself without being interrupted, misinterpreted, edited, or corrected.

I wanted, needed some time to write without worrying about copyright, plagiarism, passive voice, and the big one – privacy. 

Hemingway may have written;
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” 
but sometimes, it is necessary to bleed in private.

I rented a 120-year-old house in Washington State’s Fort Flagler State Park for a few days. It was a mini-digital detox, except for an intermittent hotspot. Forget the typewriter; those thoughts were personal enough to be written by hand. (That also meant no intrusive autocorrect ‘helping’.) And it was also a time for quiet, just like the Pause Beethoven I mentioned above. When I write, I write. I don’t try to multi-task (except for kitchen timers and laundry beeps.)

Hand, pens, paper, time.

Writing by hand is, by definition, tactile. Look at those letters; intensity and hesitancy are apparent in ways lost in typing, especially electronic typing.

Pens, note the plural. Rollerball versus ball-point versus colored versus pencil all convey information that doesn’t require pull-down menus. 

Paper, or more properly papers, because I carried at least six notebooks with me on the trip. My journal, naturally, as it is the most personal and has been added to before from before I knew how to type. Pocket notepads because I’ve accumulated so many notes in various shirts, pants, and jackets that it was time to collect and preserve those insights most worthy. One notebook for business coordination. Another that was larger than a pocket for more personal stuff, my dinner companion when I am alone and don’t have anything to read. My travel journal, because I was traveling. And my regulation-size, business-proper, letter-sized notepad that is so ubiquitous that it seems almost necessary for sketching ideas in business meetings.

And, time. It had been years since I’d done such a retreat, and so much of life had passed that I knew several days would be required. Besides, I also needed time to walk, nap, stare at the view, and generally relax.

It took more than a day of listening to the quiet to let the echoes of YouTube and Spotify to fade, leaving me with me.

Writing can be a chore, or an exercise, or therapy, or a job, or something commanded from without. Look at my blogs and books. See the topics that struggle to slide into genre labels as if they were books on a bookstore shelf. If you want a hint of what I wanted/needed to write about, look around those topics to see what I publicly avoid. Politics have enough commentors. Relationships are sacred and private and too frequently temporary. (I’ve been told that some of my best writing was a few thousand words about having to sleep with a dead guy in sub-freezing weather on a false summit by the Canadian border, but the widow asked me to never publish it. I respect her wishes.) The more personal topics are like Holmes’ ‘the dog that didn’t bark in the night’. The story was in the absence, the quiet, not in the thunder.

Writing can be therapeutic. (My therapist agrees.) Writing can also be fun. Writing can be like dance. There may be a proper way to move, and it can look like dancing; but watch a toddler or a drunk and see pure expression, unrecognizable, but honest and sincere.

I took my vacation my way. It began to do what I needed it to do, and another week or two would be better. Ah, but explicit and implicit expectations must be met. Considering the way the world is now, I want to finish writing about my rollercoaster ride through America’s wealth classes before there’s no America, or at least no US of A. Producing my photo essay of Twelve Months at Hurricane Ridge requires some vigilance every month, and possibly some hiking or cycling if the National Parks’ road gets closed.

And then there are the normal parts of life that are actually necessary. As one person said, “Fetch wood. Carry water. Reach enlightenment. Fetch wood. Carry water.” The modern equivalent may be “Pay bills. Wash dishes. Repeat.” Enlightenment seems to be optional.

A writer’s vacation can be a vacation from writing, but it can also be a vacation from the rules and obligations of writing. Bus drivers take road trips. Teachers can take time with their children while they take a break from students. Farmers, well, farmers never get a vacation. Thanks for the food. 

Need a vacation? Take one, even if means doing what looks like what you’ve spent so much time doing.