Mayacamas Ranch, May 2013

A few weeks ago, I went away to “book camp.”

It was a 4-day writing retreat organized by Laurie Wagner, a fabulous teacher who leads the weekly Wild Writing group that’s been feeding my creative soul for nearly 2 years now.

I was there to work on my novel.

Oh, yeah, did I mention? I’m going back to writing my novel.

What novel? you ask.

Funny story that. So I wrote this historical novel, set during the Inca Empire. I started it over 10 years ago. I got the idea while my then-boyfriend/now-husband and I were traveling in South America, then wrote a complete draft of it while getting my MFA in Creative Writing. Then I got a Fulbright Fellowship to go to Peru and do more writing and research. Mikhail and I lived in Cusco, Peru, and traveled all over the country for a year. Then we came home. Then I got pregnant, finished the second draft and started the third draft. Two weeks before I had Elan, I decided I was ready to take a break from it and set the novel on the proverbial shelf. I was so close in I couldn’t see the landscape any longer, and I was about to have a baby.

Six years later, I blew the dust from the (computer) files and started working on the novel again.

Okay, so six years was a little longer than I planned, but it took me that long to be ready again. For the past year, I’ve been toying with the idea of working on the novel again, wondering if I’m ready now. And in the last six months, I’ve been dipping back in. And now I’m officially coming out with it on my blog: I’m working on that novel again.

I needed a hobby for all my free time.

Yes, that was sarcastic.

Mid-flight, Mayacamas Ranch

What a gift it was to have 4 days & 3 nights to hear myself think. To let the characters relax and set up camp in my head. To wake up at 2 in the morning with a thought, grab my iPhone and write it down in the notes, and then have another, and another, until 3 in the morning, and not panic about being too tired to manage two wild-haired children at 6:30 the next morning.

To have 3 healthy & delicious meals a day set in front of me, and all I had to do was eat them.

To let the path unwind in front of me and follow it.

To do yoga facing forested hills, swim in a salt water pool, and watch bats swoop overhead at night from a hot tub.

To have space around me and inside of me.

It was quite the Mother’s Day gift.

I decided a lot of things, and here’s one of them:

Writing shouldn’t be a serious endeavor. You have to be a little crazy to write a book.

Remind me of that when I get all serious about this, okay?

So here’s to a little craziness, a little wildness & a little dried salt in the hair.