Word Raccoon, despite not feeling well, sat with me while I worked on my novel yesterday, the technical end of my and Barry’s self-created writing retreat. We’re traveling home today.

The end? Already?

Anyway, yesterday I identified and began consolidating duplicate-but-different scenes. (I know, how’d that happen? Because Drema doesn’t know how to write any other way! She’s a messy, messy writer who finds her way eventually to the labyrinth’s center. If she were a sculptor, she’d probably have to add on marble and then carve her way back in.)

Part of the fun is getting lost.

And when I examine these scenes, I notice that each is really a layer: one might carry the atmosphere, one the psychological tension, the next the choreography. It’s like I can only focus on one area at a time, and then I overlay them.

Which seems ridiculous, even to me, but it is what it is, duckies.

Mercifully, I think only one thread does that majorly. Maybe another has shades of it, but yet another thread I’ve focused so much on that I’ve managed to whittle it back. 

The newest thread knew what it was from the beginning, and she doesn’t do that at all. Kudos!

Meanwhile, Word Raccoon begged for a nap early afternoon, and then slept for at least two hours. Maybe three. She woke up wanting (typical her) a PB&J for dinner. Nothing fancy.

Maybe she ate some potato chips. And more sweets. Those are her go-to when she’s sick, if she has to eat.

Then she packed her book suitcase, shaming me for not reading most of the ones I brought. But I touched at least two of the five. Hey, just call me Rory Gilmore. I don’t travel without books.

If I had picked up the poetry instruction guide, WR would’ve gotten mad again. She hasn’t made it past the introduction, where the guy is (rightly) speaking to students of poetry, as in classroom students.

WR and I are not dabblers! We are not dilettantes, I want to tell him. We are serious about our poetry. 

There’s something off-putting about that intro, though I’m not sure what beyond its tone. 

Still, if I give it a fair shot, I might end up liking the book. It was recommended to me, and surely someone I trust saw something in it. But since it’s next in my poetry reading queue, I can only hope I can convince myself to give it a go when I get home.

Now I slightly regret packing it, because I want to see if retreat-Drema can be more reasonable about it.

Eh. There’s always tomorrow. Or is that today? Blogging gets slippery, timing-wise.

Am I the only one who likes to pack up early? I don’t want to go home yet, so I pack what I can, just so I don’t have to think about it when the time comes.

Also, this is embarrassing, but true, I always thank the room for hosting me whenever we leave a hotel or Airbnb. It just seems right. The room has witnessed, sheltered, and participated in whatever was created during our stay.

I hope you’ll call that charming and not naive.

Maybe that should be my epitaph: charming, not naive. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. 

WR says that’s too morbid to end a trip on. Or a post.

She may be right.

I stopped packing for the evening and turned to submitting poetry. Remember, that’s my sneaky way of revising: if WR and I read poems I haven’t touched in a while, we will want to improve them. 

Time to dig out the first aid kit. It has cold medicine in it. (Look at us time traveling again. Somehow we’re back to this evening, though I’m gonna schedule this for tomorrow.) 

Thanks, yester-Drema.