Summer reading, is there anything better?

I’m up early this morning to head to Carolina Beach State Park where researchers are banding painted buntings to track them. It’s all research for the novel, baby!

We’re leaving tomorrow to head to the mountains for nine days of real family vacation (not the kind of vacation where I get invited to speak or teach a workshop and I drag my family along for a free hotel experience). As I always do when we travel, I’m a little panicked about what to take with me to read, so I’ve spent the last few days gathering things from my TBR pile. I’ll probably take ten books. I might only finish two during the trip, but I need the peace of knowing the others are there just in case. This semester I’m teaching a course in North Carolina literature at UNCA, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading for that class. I’ll post the reading list and syllabus here soon.

In the meantime, enjoy this New York Times photo essay of folks doing what I hope to be doing for the next week: “Reading Outside.”

In Scott Avett's studio

Today Mallory and I spent the morning in Scott Avett’s studio in Concord, North Carolina, out in the country a half hour or so from Charlotte. Most of you probably know Scott as one of the members of the Avett Brothers, but he’s also an incredible painter. It was a pleasure to spend the morning looking at his work and talking with him about his process. I grew up not too far from him, and we’re about the same age, so there was a lot to talk about.

I’m lucky to do the work I do, y’all. Thank you for making it possible. Back to the desk tomorrow morning. Onward.

That still small voice

We’ve got a cricket in the house. For the past two nights it’s started singing around 10 p.m. once the kitchen has been cleaned and the girls have been asleep for an hour or so and Mallory are making our way to bed after deciding which books we’ll be reading before turning out the lights.

Listen, I have no problem with crickets. I find their song full of charm and nostalgia. I love hearing them from the front porch or when I’m walking through a field at dusk. But when you have a cricket in your house you are forced to be made aware of how loud they are. This one is loud. And here’s the thing: we can’t find it. Is it somewhere in the living room? Perhaps hiding behind all the children’s books we keep stacked in the cold (old coal burning) fireplace? Is it in the laundry room, tucked in behind the stacked washer/dryer that fits inside the tiny room that is better described as a closet? Is it in my closet? Mallory’s? Is it under our bed?

I run a small fan-powered white noise machine each night, something I’ve done for years, even before meeting Mallory. She can’t stand it. She likes silence, which means she likes hearing all the bumps and bangs of the night: the girls calling out in their dreams down the hall, the pinecones hitting the roof from the 80-year-old trees that tower above our house, the mournful whistle of the train that passes around 10:30 p.m. and again around 3:00 a.m. I don’t want to hear that stuff, not when I’m sleeping at least. But bring a cricket into the house and Mallory suddenly loves a good sound machine. I have a travel version, and last night we plugged it in beside her bed and let it rip at full power.

We could still hear the cricket. I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and listened to its intermittent call. I woke up and heard it when Mallory came to bed at 11:00 and feigned sleep while she got out a flashlight and looked around our bedroom for it. I woke in the middle of the night and heard it while taking a bathroom break. And this morning, when my eyes popped open at 6:00 a.m., I could still hear it.

I’ve been awake for an hour and a half, reading and listening for the cricket, trying to figure out where it is. (I think it’s in the fireplace behind those books.), and I’ve also been trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m a little stuck on my novel. Sure, I’ve been writing a lot over the past week when I haven’t been working on the novel (letters to students; putting syllabi together for the fall; notes for essays, etc.), and it’s all part of the same larger job of being a writer, but the novel-in-progress is the thing that needles me when I’m not working on it, just like that hidden cricket’s song. Whether I’m working on it or not, the novel is always there, sometimes out of sight. calling for me to come find it. It’s real and urgent, whether I can see it or not.

The ball was dropped

The last time I wrote was Saturday night, and today is Thursday afternoon. It’s been an interesting week.

On Sunday we were supposed to take the girls on a kayak tour to an area in the Cape Fear known as Shark Tooth Island, but bad weather was predicted and the tour was cancelled. We hung around the house instead, reading and having a quiet day.

On Monday I woke up early and got some words on the page, but I mostly spent the morning reading manuscripts for blurbs and doing other busy work. In the late morning, I took the girl to the beach while Mallory headed down to Southport NC for a photo shoot. The girls and I spent three hours at the beach, and I watched them play the whole time. I normally like to read on the beach, but they’re not great swimmers, and I promised Mallory that i wouldn’t read so I could keep an eye on them. So I literally watched them play in the surf. it was glorious and exactly what all three of us needed.

On Tuesday morning I was back at the desk early to work on the novel, and then Mallory and I went to our friends’ house where they were hosting a fundraiser for NC’s governor Roy Cooper. I’m a fan and a supporter. Despite your politics, I think we can all agree that he’s a great person who’s always handled himself with dignity and maintained a sense of honesty. People say he’s a dark horse candidate for president in 2024. I’d vote for him.

I stayed home on Wednesday morning and wrote in the kitchen before anyone else woke up, and in the late morning I left for Chapel Hill, where I spoke to about fifty public school teachers from Wayne County NC about writing historical fiction and my path to becoming a North Carolina writer. I love speaking with teachers. What they’ve done is answer a call, not pursue a career. Bless them.

This morning I was at the office early, and I finished up this month’s essay for This Is Working. I think it’s the best one yet. On August 1 you can decide if you agree with me.

More squirrels

Folks who followed me on social media (I am blessedly withdrawn from social media. Let’s pray it lasts.) might remember last summer when we had a squirrel in our attic. When patching the hole in the eave the squirrel entered through, a nest of newborn baby squirrels tumbled out. I ended up locating a squirrel rescue and drove the bundle deep into the woods northeast of Wilmington and dropped the squirrel babies off with a woman who takes in abandoned critters of all kinds, nurses them, and then releases them into the wild.

Well, this morning I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and finished my writing by 8:00, and then I puttered around the house with Mallory and the girls before heading to Ghost Hill Press for their Curated Saturday event, where I hung out in the store until 2:00 p.m. to handsell my favorite books. We had a great turnout and it was a lot of fun. If you missed the link to my favorite books, you can find it here for books and here for audiobooks.

When I came home, the house was empty, so I ate lunch and got back to work compiling the incredibly long list of favorite books that so many readers have shared with me. You can find that running list here.

I took a break and decided to do some quick yard work, so I went out the side door and surprised a squirrel near the utility building where we keep all the lawn stuff. It was fussing like crazy. I unlocked the building and got out the weed eater and walked to the front yard, where I found a tiny, pink newborn squirrel abandoned in the grass. I assume that I spooked the mother when I came out, and she dropped the squirrel and skedaddled. I scooped it up and put it under my shirt and held it against my skin to keep it warm, and then I came inside and put a rice-filled heating pad in the microwave. Once it was warm I dropped it in the shoebox with the baby and some cloth napkins. I went outside to retrieve the weed eater (I wasn’t doing any yard work today because I was visiting the squirrel lady again.) Imagine my surprise when I looked down and saw another baby squirrel. Twins?

I couldn’t find the phone number for the squirrel lady I used last summer, so I took the box into the backyard and downloaded baby squirrel sounds on my ipad and left it sitting beside the box. I waited at the window for over an hour, and while plenty of squirrels visited the bird feeders (I can’t keep them off the damn things) not a single one of them seemed interested in rescuing their baby brethren. But I got to see a lot of nature - hummingbirds, a baby rabbit, countless birds of all kinds - that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t kept vigil for so long. I finally got in touch with a rescue that would take the babies.

By the time Mallory and the girls got home from Mallory’s grandparents’ house I had the babies packed up and ready to transport. The girls got a quick look at their tiny, pink wiggling bodies, and then it was off to the squirrel saviors.

When friends come to town

My family travels a lot, and we’re accustomed to being the people who pull into town to visit others, but yesterday we had the treat of having friends come to visit. My buddy Christian Helms, who I’ve known since high school and have stayed close with since, visited Wilmington with his wife Jenn and their two boys. Mallory and I met them with our daughters at Hi-Wire Brewery here in Wilmington, where the kids played, ate gelato and pizza, and the adults caught up after not seeing each other for almost five years.

Christian and Jenn live in Austin TX, where he’s the founding owner of Helms Workshop, a full-service brand design agency. Over the years, Christian has led branding work for everyone from Southern Comfort to Tecovas to Howler Bros. to North Carolina’s own Highland Brewery. HIs work is breathtaking and groundbreaking.

I love spending time with Christian because we always talk about our work and our plans and the many ways our careers can intersect with one another’s, which has happened often. When I first moved to Louisiana for graduate school in 2003, I had the idea that I would lead community writing workshops called Written Work Workshop for high school students to make extra money because I literally had no money. Christian had just moved to Austin after graduating design school and an internship in New York. I asked if he’d be willing to come up with a design for the workshop idea, and he delivered. If I’m not mistaken, it was one of his first designs when he went out on his own when his career first began.

Years later, in 2018, I reached out to Christian and Helms Workshop to make the design for Open Canon, and then I reached out to them again to design the brand for This Is Working, which all of you have seen.

It’s such an incredible pleasure to have friends who are also creatives, and it’s an honor when they’re wiling to work with you.

Back home

I woke up in Blowing Rock yesterday morning and hammered out a few pages on the work-in-progress before eating breakfast and hopping into the car to drive back across the state. I honestly can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven across North Carolina. Thousands of time, easily.

By 4:00 p.m. I was sitting at the desk in our office, ready to interview NPR host Scott Simon for a future Creators’ Conversation that will be featured on Living in the Work. Most you know Scott Simon - or at least you know his voice - from NPR’s Weekend Edition: Saturday. He’s probably my favorite NPR personality: deeply sensitive and inquisitive, but wildly intelligent and acerbic. Scott is also an incredibly talented and prolific writer, publishing books about everything from his mother to the Cubs to his daughters to a YA novel.

During the interview, Scott and I talked about one of my favorite NPR moments ever: Scott’s interview with writer Gail Godwin, whom I happen to adore as both a writer and a person. Her novel Flora is perhaps the most perfect novel I’ve ever read. Here’s a link to the interview. You won’t regret listening. During my talk with Scott, he explained that listening while he’s doing an interview in order to see how the conversation is changing is similar to how he listens to his work when he’s writing. What’s changing? Where is the story going? Can he follow?

I’m back home, back at the desk this morning and will be back at it again tomorrow. Onward.

Q: Have I made it? A: No

Great mornings at the desk the past two days, and I think I’ve finally hit a sustainable groove to keep me working away on the novel. The page feels both urgent and fresh, and I’m coming to the page with ideas and leaving the work for the day with entry points waiting for me when I return.

Today, I went on a bike ride with our daughters, aged 7 and 6, to see if we could spot the 10-foot alligator who was photographed having a snack of a turtle in our neighborhood while we out of town.

We didn’t see the alligator, but we did have the chance to visit with one of our 7 year old’s friends who lives nearby. While the gils played, I visited with the parents on the porch. The girl’s mother is also a writer, and she is about to leave for a weeklong writer’s retreat. I was sharing my envy with her. During my doldrums a few weeks ago, Mallory tried to send me away to a writing retreat, but the one I most rely on was full and booked throughout the summer. I was telling my friend that even after four novels the work hasn’t gotten any easier.

But I’ve found ways to live in the work even when the work wasn’t coming to me, or at least I wasn’t coming to it in the right way. I’ve been reading a lot, and while reading another author’s work I also hold my own novel in my mind. While I read, I ask What can I learn from this character? How can I apply this technique or causality or the use of this object in my novel? I’ve also found myself connecting with my novel each night when I enter the dream space before falling asleep. I make the same connection when I slowly wake up each morning. These are the two parts of my day when my mind and heart are most open to possibility and creativity, and I try to make use of them. Even though I wasn’t working at the desk, I was working.

Yesterday I received a number of emails and text messages letting me know that my last name was a clue in yesterday’s LA Times crossword, which is reprinted in newspapers across the country, including in Wilmington where we live and in Asheville where I work. It was an honor to see my name and debut novel mentioned, and it was also surreal.

But while I got a big kick out of it, it didn’t excite me the way it would have in 2012 when A Land More Kind Than Home was published. Back then every mention of my name or the novel was a huge deal. But things feel different now. It’s not that I’m not touched or proud or a little embarrassed by seeing my name in the crossword, it’s that I now realize that seeing my name in the crossword has very little bearing on my career and certainly no effect on the work at hand. I still had to get up this morning and get to the office and sit down at the desk by 7:00 a.m., just like I did yesterday, just like I’ll do tomorrow. Onward.

Back today

I didn’t write yesterday because it was a crap day at the desk and I wanted to spare you from having to deal with my sour mood. After four novels and countless essays, etc., you’d think I’d have some idea how to go about this work, how to wring the most from my time at the desk. But I don’t. I know how to live in my own creativity, but writing the book is the hardest thing about publishing the book.

But I’ve kept some of Maggie Smith’s advice in mind over the past couple of days. Yesterday, I sat and waited for the exact fish I was hoping to find, and when I didn’t see it I packed up my pole and tackle and went home in a huff. This morning, I sat in the boat, and then I caught a lot of fish, over 1,500 words of fish in just a couple of hours. I don’t know that I’ll keep all the fish, but at least they’re there.

There was another thing about today that felt a little different. I woke up and went straight to my work. I didn’t even make coffee at home, doing so at the office instead. I drove to work without the radio on to relish in the dream state from which I’d just emerged, and I sat down by 7:00 a.m., did my breathing exercises, and waited on the fish - whatever they would be - to come. They came. Hallelujah.

I know that some of you might not be able to go right to your creative work when you wake up first thing in the morning. Often, I can’t either. But I can live in that consciously creative space after waking, even if my body is doing something else. You can too. Take a pad or slips of paper with you to take note of what might come to mind. Catch the fish as they appear; you can figure out what kind of fish they are later. Onward.

P.S. I spent half an hour on the phone with my editor today. She likes the direction the novel is going in, and she’s excited about a few ideas I have about books to come. I’ve had the same editor for all four of my published novels, so it was a bit of a shock to me when he retired as we’d been friends and worked together for over a decade. But the new editor is young and brilliant and funny and wry, and I have no doubt she’s exactly who I need right now for the book I’m working on.

At the desk, in the studio

As I hoped yesterday, today was a much better writing day. I woke up around 6:30 and spent a half hour drinking coffee and reading The Last Slave Ship, and then I ate some oatmeal (just because my cholesterol is down doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods!) before heading into the office. I was at my desk and ready to work by 7:30 am.

I began reading my novel-in-progress from its first page, trying to find a way back into it after a bit of a break over the past few weeks of work travel and vacation. As I read, I made notes in the manuscript about what was needed: more info. about the character, a sharper sense of setting, more context around sequences of events, more historical/cultural context about the present moment. Each note provided me an opportunity to reenter the novel with new ideas that would illuminate old pages. I often find this is the only way I can get back into something after stepping away from it. It’s hard for me just to pick up at the last sentence and continue on. I feel like I need to step back into the existing pages with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.

While this was unfolding, I had a major breakthrough about one of the novel’s main characters. Since I began working on the novel, I had decided that the character would be of a certain profession and that he was coming home as part of that profession. But I don’t know much - if anything - about that profession. Instead of building the character, I was building a model of the kind of professional this man is. He felt flat and hollow, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Today, I decided that the man would be coming home for a different reason aside from work, and once I made that decision the character completely opened up on the page. He became a human instead of someone who works a job and has a career.

I didn’t get any real writing done, but I got a lot of work done today, and sometimes that’s as good as or better than getting new words on the page. The ideas have to be there first, and today the ideas were flying. The words will come next. Right?

Late in the morning my friend and fellow writer Kevin Maurer stopped by our office. We’ve been friends for years and have worked on numerous projects together, from essays to television show pilots. When we’re together we spend a lot of time talking about writing and the writing business. One night, based on one of those conversations over a few beers, I went home and wrote a series of tweets that ended up being retweeted thousands of times by authors like Neil Gaiman. Several websites republished it, including Charlotte Lit. You can read the essay version of the tweets here. Kevin and I are back at it, working on a tv show we’re hoping to start filming this fall. Stay tuned. Fingers crossed.

I left the office and went by the library (two days in a row?!) to pick up another book I had on hold, and then I went home and ate lunch, took a quick shower, and headed downtown for an interview at WHQR Studios for an interview show called Coastline, where a local host named Rachel Lewis Hilburn speaks with everyone from politicians to actors to community members. She interviewed me about This Is Working and the role creativity plays in my life. It was a fun hour, and it made me believe even more in what I’m trying to do with this creative community. You can listen to the interview here. It’ll be on tomorrow’s episode of Coastline and will run again on Sunday.

This evening, we went by Mallory’s brother’s house for cake to celebrate his birthday with his family, and then we headed to Carolina Beach in the hopes that Mallory could get a few shots of flooding during the king tide for a series on climate change that she’s working on with a journalist. Now, I’m back home and putting off getting the girls to bed. Mallory just left to head downtown to catch some shots of flooding there.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back at the desk, reimagining a character I thought I knew. Onward.

Back at the desk, kind of

It was hard to get back to the desk today. I spent the week of July 4th with Mallory and our girls at a family reunion on the Outer Banks, and I came home on Saturday evening happy but tired. We spent yesterday with my mom for her birthday.

This morning, I was up at 6:00 to eat breakfast and read a few pages of Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow before my Pilates class started at 7:00. Yes, I do Pilates. My cholesterol was through the roof, so for the past six months I’ve changed my diet and worked out a lot, and it’s worked wonders for my health. After Pilates I had to go in for a physical at 8:30 am where my doctor was cautiously optimistic about my cholesterol labs, and I was sitting down at the desk in the office Mallory and I rent by 9:00 a.m., ready to work. Usually, before I work, I do a couple of breathing exercises I learned from James Nestor’s book Breath that supposedly stimulate relaxation and creativity. They seem to work, at least for me.

I forgot to mention that I use a computer app called Freedom that locks me out of the internet for however long I choose. No email, social media, news, etc. Today, I scheduled Freedom from 6:00-11:00 am. But I had a hard time getting back into the book I’m working on. (Is my editor going to read this? My agent? Are they members of This Is Working? No, so no sweat there!) I believe in this book and I think about it all the time, but it wasn’t happening easily today.

I spent about an hour forcing a few pages of new writing, but I decided to take a break and get down some new ideas for a new novel that came to me last week. I remembered some advice that my friend and fellow writer Jess Walter had given me years ago when I asked how he was able to write so many different types of things - novels, short stories, nonfiction, etc. Jess said he’s able to get a lot of work done because he’s always able to write something. So that’s what I did: the novel I’m supposed to be working on was on drip mode today, but I wrote something that I really found exciting when I took a break from it and turned toward something else.

I worked at my desk until 11:00 am, and then I went to the library and rewarded myself with two books I had on hold: The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines and The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony by Andrew Lawlor. I read Lawlor’s book in hardcover when it came out and I gave it to a friend, but after spending the week in the Outer Banks I found myself wanting to read it again.

After the library I came home and took over the household duties so Mallory could squeeze in a couple of hours of work at the office. I made lunch for the girls and me, but mostly I sat on the porch and read The Last Slave Ship and then took the girls to piano practice, where I sat on the piano teacher’s porch and read. I’m already 100 pages into it and learning a lot about this heartbreaking story and the community the survivors created.

But here’s what I need to do and what I’ll probably do first thing in the morning when I sit down to work. I’m going to reread everything I’ve written for the novel-in-progress to find the thread that will get me back into it. Also, I think I might find myself handwriting again. Onward.