This past weekend, I left the country for the first time in seven years (!!!) and I got to see dear friends and also remember what it’s like to be in an unfamiliar place.
Writing is sometimes compared to traveling because you get to “go places in your mind” but to me they feel nothing alike. When I am writing, I feel curiosity and wonder but ultimately I am still in control; I can decide to follow a character down a path or not, I can ignore an obvious plot point and go searching for something more surprising, I can close the laptop and walk away.
Traveling reminds me how little is actually in my control, how little I know of the world. The feeling that anything could happen becomes a physical one rather than an intellectual one. It brings me back to how I felt when I first moved to New York, every minute something new that had to be negotiated in real time. A heightened sense of how many of us there are.
Anyway, though I don’t feel that writing is like traveling, here are some corners of the Internet I’ve stumbled upon while working on this novel.
The Saturday Evening Girls, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century “library club” for young working women living in the North End of Boston.
Boat profiles from Small Boats Magazine. The names on these boats. Little Crab! Hunky Dory! Handy Billy!
10 Folk Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You Never Heard. It’s true, I had never heard any of these. Now I have.
IAU designated constellations. Again the names.
A forum where people who own, build, and/or repair wooden boats ask questions and share tips. There is poetry here:
My Nordic Folkboat opens up like a peach basket, and stays that way when dry.
Also when it gets wet, the wood soaks up lots of water. The wood is wet to the touch on in the bilge.
It is planked in larch.