Notes from Maine - 2021/11/07

This time of year is easy. I just get up when the sun comes through my window. Now that the time has changed, I came down to a cold house. The thermostat hadn’t woken up yet. We had a heavy frost last night. It’s time to take in the hoses and make sure that I’ve finished all my outdoor chores before the snow flies. Some years we get a decent snow in November. I think we’ll skate through this year, but that’s just a guess.

Back in July, I filled the barn loft with hay. There was a big hay shortage last spring and I was forced to drive all over to get one or two bales at a time. That was a hassle that I’m hoping to avoid next year. Unfortunately, the only way to not run out is to be very frugal this year, so I haven’t yet touched any of the hay in the loft. Each week, I go to the feed store and drag even more hay back to the house in the back of the SUV.

I’m sincerely looking forward to the day when it feels safe to break into the stockpile. 

I enjoy gathering and preparing. I’m sure most people do. The trick is to not get too bogged down with future concerns, I guess. I don’t want to fill my house with books I’ll never get around to reading, or projects that I’ll never finish. At least hay is consumable. Those horses will eat everything in sight. Maybe I can get them to eat some of the books that are collecting dust.

Upstairs, I have a box of books that Mom couldn’t bear to part with. They had sentimental value for some reason—maybe they belonged to her late husband? I know that I’m not allowed to get rid of them, but that’s the only reason they’re here. She has probably forgotten about the whole transaction. 

In my attic, I have a piece of furniture that my friend inherited from his mom. It clashed hard with his decor, but he couldn’t bring himself to dispose of it. I have a big attic, so I’m hosting the furniture until he forgets about it, I guess. It has been a few years since his mother died. Maybe he’s ready to part with it now, but I don’t really want to bring it up. 

I read somewhere that squirrels have no idea where they buried their nuts. You probably read the same thing. They busily bury stores of food and then promptly forget their own treasure map. It’s just dumb luck (or a good nose?) when they manage to dig up a forgotten cache. Maybe dumb luck is the wrong way to put it. Their squirrel brain thinks, “This is a good place to bury nuts.” Later, the same brain thinks, “This would be a good place to find nuts.” It’s diminishing to call that luck, although I gather they spend an awful lot of time digging places and finding nothing at all.

Most of the time, I bury stories in the corners of my head. Does everyone do this? I think of an interesting concept, imagine how it might begin and where it might go, and then I write it down and forget it. I rarely have to return to the written list. When a story is ready to come out of deep storage, I find myself thinking about it while I’m wrapping up whatever I’m working on. When I conceive of the idea, I think, “I’ll never be able to write this—it’s too complicated.” Then, when the idea reappears in my head the complications are gone. Maybe the idea simplified itself and maybe my subconscious just churned up solutions for the issues. Whatever the mechanism, I’m glad for it. I’m never at a loss for what to write next.

Occasionally, the next story I’m destined to write is one that someone else stored (rent free!) in my head. They’ll mention a dream or an idea that came to them and tell me I should write about it. I smile and nod, but sometimes the idea sticks. One time my nephew’s father said, “You should write a book called Blood Ghost.” 

I rolled my eyes and told him I would. But the idea germinated. What is a blood ghost? Wait, wasn’t there something in the woods in that book Hunting Tree? What if that thing fed on the blood spilled at the end of that book? Would that be a Blood Ghost? Anyway, I did end up writing Blood Ghost, and I really enjoyed it.

I guess I’m thinking about story ideas because I’m wrapping up a book now. Of course, I’m always wrapping up a book, it seems. Sometimes it seems like I don’t get to spend enough time with the stories and other times I feel like I’ve been working on a concept forever. When I feel insecure, I bury myself in writing and ignore editing, marketing, creating cover art, etc. Those are things I should do, but they’re easy to ignore.

Maybe once I switch over to using hay from the loft, I’ll have more time for advertising.