Writing Retreat, Day 6

Sat­ur­day, I:

• wrote my 2,000 words in two stints;
• crossed the 100,000-word mark in my novel;
• debat­ed chang­ing the title from Trans­la­tions to Reflec­tion, Trans­la­tion, Inva­sion (which is a not-com­plete­ly-inac­cu­rate sum­ma­ry of the sto­ry, at a very high level);
• turned on the air con­di­tion­ing, because it was get­ting pret­ty hot;
• bor­rowed the neigh­bours’ kayak and pad­dled on the lake for a half-hour or so right at sunset;
• went and got some more pho­tos of the Milky Way and (serendip­i­tous­ly) the Auro­ra Borealis.

“Can I help you with some­thing?” Head­less man­nequins wore flim­sy cot­ton dress­es in earth tones. Coun­ter­top racks dis­played neack­laces and bracelets made of beads, pearls, or smooth and pol­ished stones. A sign at the back said RESTROOMS FOR PAYING CUSTOMERS ONLY.

“I need a wash­room,” I said.

She motioned at the sign.

“No, I need a washroom.”

She sighed, though I couldn’t tell whether she was exas­per­at­ed with me or with the sit­u­a­tion I was evi­dent­ly try­ing to put her in. “Pol­i­cy,” she said. Then, giv­ing me a good look­ing-over, she said, much more qui­et­ly, “You okay?”

Yes, I want­ed to say.

“No.”

From Trans­la­tions

Pho­to details: all shot at 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200. The Milky Way ones were 45 sec­ond expo­sures; the Auro­ra pho­tos were 30 seconds.

Here’s a quick stop-motion ver­sion of the night. An hour or so, in the dark, con­densed into 8 seconds.

Inter­est­ed in prints of my pho­tos? Let me know, and we can work some­thing out.