My Dream Writing Spots

As a writer

When I write, I can’t write in a vacuum. I need to watch people, study people and their body language and their behavior, study surroundings, listen to background music and snippets of conversation among the murmurs.

I also need an interesting space. Neither too edgy nor too

Therefore, I dream of interesting spaces where all of the above happens, yet in a way that doesn’t intrude into my thought processes.

Dreams fulfilled

Some of these ideal writing places I have already encountered — the lobby of The Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs, MO; the Great Hall at Starved Rock State Park in Utica, IL; Behind the fireplace at Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, NE; various cafe’s across the US. All these places have the intoxicating combination of vital people and intriguing space. I could go back to any of those today if I had the money and time.

Dreams that might be beyond my grasp

One place I’d love to write is in a Class-C RV at Mozingo Lake (Maryville MO) for a summer retreat. As I don’t own a camper, this might be a bit challenging. Also challenging is their spotty wi-fi, but it might be good enough to hook in now and again. A cabin for the summer might also be good, but I don’t know where one could get a hold of one for a less than prohibitive cost.

Photo by Nicolas Postiglioni on Pexels.com

Another dream would be riding/writing on Amtrak (or better, some Canadian railway) for a spell. I would have a sleeper car, I would get meals in the dining car, and I would document my trip in the observation car (west of the Mississippi) with computer in lap. Unless I can get a writer in residence through Amtrak, I would not been able to afford that. (And I’ve tried.)

Help me out here!

I’m looking for writing retreats — coffeehouses; inns and B and B’s with open spaces or lobbies; yurts for rent; cabins with scenery; known writers’ retreats. Recommend something to me!

On the Lake Shore Limited

So I’m on the Lake Shore Limited, barreling toward Chicago. I think I’m still in Ohio — nope, according to Google Maps, I’m near Goshen, Indiana. The train is apparently running two and a half hours late, and I’m hoping we’re not any later because we need to connect with the next train in Chicago, and we don’t have that much layover.

Meanwhile, breakfast was spent in the cafe car with the most beautiful scenery on the trip: the sunrise over Sheldon Marsh Nature Preserve, with a still pool of water on each side of the train tracks. The view was like this: (Click for video)

My adventure is close to ending, and the beginning of the semester is about to begin. For me, that means teaching human services classes at Northwest Missouri State University. I’ve already put together some homework in case I don’t make it home in time (as I’ve said, we’re spectacularly late). Here’s hoping for a good semester!

ENDEX (as they say at the end of a preparedness training exercise)

Another New York Hope in the books; I think the numbers go like this:

Three moulage artists

Ninety distinct moulage applications

Scenarios: Urban search and rescue, rural search and rescue, wilderness search and rescue, cityscape active shooter, swiftwater rescue

Injuries ranging from pneumothorax to head injuries minor and deadly, to impalements, open fractures, burns, intestinal evisceration, scrapes and bruises, and throw in a couple heart attacks and mentally disturbed roles.

Staff members — a surprising number I haven’t counted, but categories are coordinating staff, logistics, lane CEs (who run the scenarios), team CEs (who manage the student teams), safety staff, transportation and moulage.
******

I slept for 12 hours last night. I’m hoping to get some brain cells free to write today as I wait for the train back home — and on the train back home, as I’ll have a lot of free time.

Right back to first day of classes.

Let me know, though, if you want to see more moulage pics.

Waiting for the Train

I’m sitting in a railway station (with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel). The station in Osceola, IA, still retains the character of a previous era, with golden wood wainscoting and trim, steam radiators, and a worn, black-and-white tiled floor. It’s a great place to begin a journey, actually. More on train travel later, when I have hours to kill at the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station.

I sit here wondering what I should write next, or if I should go back to editing Gaia’s Hands. There’s not too much impetus to edit it with a backlog of books I’d like to see published (three are strong contenders at the moment, although Whose Hearts are Mountainsreally needs a dev edit.

I just got done with Hands, the short story with Grzegorz – my husband has termed it “a really warped coming of age story”, and he’s right. I hope to post it on this page for you to read.

The Night Train

When I was a child, I lived a block from the Rock Island tracks, back at the end of the Golden Age of trains. I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear freight trains passing by on the tracks, or the 11 PM night Rocket, a passenger train, to Chicago. For a child who didn’t sleep well, the trains were a comfort, offering familiarity in the uncertainty of the night.

The Rock Island Line, like many railroads in the US, struggled to survive when the interstate system made it possible to travel at speeds previously unknown. The network of roads — interstates, US highways, and local roads — made the great elegant passenger trains obsolete. However, the Rock Island didn’t go without a fight when the government went to take it over, and they wooed people to their side by offering family excursion trains to Chicago.

My family took one of those excursion trips to Chicago, ninety miles away, in 1970, when I was seven. I remember everything about that trip — the shiny exteriors of the Rock Island passenger cars and the worn interiors, the feeling of watching the industrial jungles and the brick stations pass by, bridges over sleepy water, and the noise, the glorious noise of the engine’s horn close up.

The thing I remember most was eating breakfast in the dining car. With its heavy silverware, its china with the Rock Island logo, and its white tablecloths, I felt like a princess. I don’t know if any dining experience will equal that one in my mind, because the waiter found me lemon and honey for my tea with a graciousness it’s hard to find nowadays. That waiter would be in his eighties if he were still alive, but if I could find him, I would thank him for making my day memorable.

The Rock Island line is no longer, having been subsumed into Amtrak. Unlike the Rocket, the aging elegant Rock Island passenger train, Amtrak presents a train ride with little to be nostalgic about. The chairs in coach are not as comfortable, the meals on the Lake Shore Limited are now pre-made, many of the old railway stations are closed and the big stations made smaller due to security needs. Sometimes the toilets malfunction and things get — odorous.

But trains are still worth traveling on. The variety of people you encounter, from the Amish who see the train as a necessary evil, to itinerant musicians with backpack and guitar, and businessmen with their suit bags hanging in the luggage area. You can still sleep in a sleeper car, which is a miracle of getting two beds and a couch in a tiny space. The chugging of the engine and ringing of the bell as the train edges into the station, and the hiss of luggage wheels as the passengers hustle toward the station, waking up in the middle of the night in a sleeper car as the train travels through the Sandusky preserve on a narrow bridge of land surrounded by lake and marsh.

I dream of the trains coming back someday, when we have given up some of our control issues over travel, when we have given up our love affair with cars. Maybe it’s a futile dream, but it’s mine.