Writing Retreat 2020, Day 8

Sat­ur­day:

• Wrote about 650 words in Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, most­ly in an outline
• Read more of The Knight—only two chap­ters left now
• Found out on Face­book that my sis­ter-in-law has renamed her pear jam “Patrick Pear jam”—I can only assume this is because I’m an inces­sant evan­ge­list for the stuff (seri­ous­ly, try it on pork chops)
• Tried to decide if that’s bet­ter than Pat Pota­to, or if it’s a lat­er­al move
• Biked into town, osten­si­bly to get sun­glass­es (since I dropped mine in the lake last night while I was kayak­ing) and end­ed up tool­ing around for almost 10 km (I did get sun­glass­es, though it took a while to find a pair that weren’t a) wom­en’s or b) camo)
• Wrote anoth­er 1,300 words in Daniel, Daniel, Daniel; I seem to have some­thing to aim at again
• Kayaked for about 45 min­utes, this time with a cam­era (see the panora­ma at the top)

Here’s a quick snip­pet of some of the writ­ing recently:

Feb­ru­ary 30
Church bake sale (Make pie!)

Even though it was writ­ten in red ink, excla­ma­tion-point­ed, cir­cled thrice, and marked with an orange high­lighter, she for­got and had to take store-bought cook­ies that she unpacked onto paper plates and cov­ered in plas­tic wrap while she sat in the park­ing lot, fur­thest from the door, hop­ing no one would look in her car’s win­dows and catch her at it.

Mach 4
Stephen (Birth­day)

She gave him a card drip­ping with sap­py sen­ti­ment, because she was, after all, his moth­er. Also a mug she’d found online with a bird on it, cussing about meet­ings, that she thought matched his sar­don­ic, off­beat humour.

Avril 18
George + Judith (Anniver­sary)

Judith got a card, too. She was still fam­i­ly, even if she and June had­n’t spo­ken since the funer­al. June knew she had stuff to work through – they both did – and also that every­one grieves in their own way.

From the first draft of “Dried Flowers”

This is my last full day here at the cab­in. I’ll be clean­ing up and pack­ing tomor­row, and head­ing home.

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