Last Friday, my husband and I were set to leave on a much-needed weekend getaway. My mom agreed to stay with the kids and manage their busy weekend. We had plans to slip off to a hotel in Bethany Beach, Delaware, and attend a three day music festival in Ocean City, Maryland called Oceans Calling. On the agenda for Friday night, my number one favorite singer/songwriter Jack Johnson; On Saturday, John Mayer.
It was raining from the moment we opened our eyes on Friday. Still, we packed and readied the kids off to school. We kissed my mom goodbye, despite flash flood warnings and pulled out of our driveway ready for the five hour drive — how bad could the weather be, we figured.
When we turned to get on the local parkway at ten am, the roadway was already shut down, a river forming before our eyes. Our windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain, and with some smaller roads already flooded, we turned around. We’d wait an hour or two at home for the worst to pass and then get down to Delaware.
We laughed about our lousy luck when we arrived home. Then we did a casual check of the basement to make sure all was dry. But when we went down the steps, we found water streaming in through a runoff pipe. Spewing like a fountain in the corner of the basement. Twenty minutes after we got home, there was three inches of water on the floor.
Suddenly, we were trekking buckets of water up the steps and out the back door. We were raising toys and musical instruments, Christmas ornaments and backpacks off lower shelves and piling them on higher ones. An emergency visit from our plumber ended in them capping the runoff pipe, and we were able to slow down the water, but not before FOUR inches of water rose up.
Needless to say, we couldn’t see Jack Johnson play. Grateful we were all okay and the house wasn’t damaged, I tried to focus on the positive: It could have been worse. We really only lost a few rugs and yoga mats.
As I lay on the couch that night in pajamas feeling sorry for myself, I put on a YouTube video of Jack Johnson. My mind wandered to the rising water table outside my house, and I thought about how much a flood mimicked the creative process: You are hit with a wellspring of ideas, a literal flow of characters, dialogue and story, and at times when you’re writing, you feel you’re under water and treading to stay afloat. But then the water recedes, the overwhelming sense that you may be failing retreats, too, and suddenly, you can see the floor again. It sparkles. There’s something you love waiting for you. That’s where my book is right now. I’m beginning to see the floor.
In better news, we DID go to Bethany Beach for the second day of the concert, and our freaky Friday ended up in a spectacular Saturday because we did see John Mayer, Noah Kahan and Ben Harper —and all of them were reminders of just how inspiring musicians are as artists. They’re willing to play music night after night, day after day, for audiences because it makes them happy. Music to them is like breathing, the way writing to me is like breathing. I wouldn’t know what to do with all of my thoughts/experiences/emotions if I didn’t make sense of them in stories, and that is certainly the case with truth tellers John Mayer and Noah Kahan.
On to the fun stuff…
I was inspired by the the article “The Beauty of a Silent Walk” in the New York Times this week. When you go outside and power walk, don’t you often pop in headphones and listen to a podcast or music or an audiobook? I do. Well, the Times reports that the latest wellness obsession on TikTok is challenging people to leave the earbuds behind. Why? Because it allows our minds to wander and rest. “Walking in silence is an ancient tradition rooted in mindfulness,” says the article, “a form of meditation that helps people focus on the physical sensations, thoughts and emotions of the present moment, without any judgement.”
When I walk my dog in the morning, I always listen to an audiobook or a podcast. I recently heard the Serial podcast “The Retrievals,” and wow, that was a good one. Mostly, though, I listen to podcasts about writing. It’s almost like chatting with an author friend before I start work each morning. At lunch, when my head is all clogged up with my own book and my eyes are crossed with too many sentences, I walk my dog without my phone or earbuds. It’s been extremely beneficial to my writing process to roam without any voices in my ears. It nearly always results in a fresh idea for the next section I’m writing OR I realize what I need to fix in the section I just finished.
And the article is right. Just listening to the birds is energizing. I often pick small leaves off bushes and rub my thumb along their smooth surfaces. I feel the pavement under my feet. Silent walks feel really, really good.
Staying in the house from Murder, She Wrote.
One of my must-read blogs for years now is Cup of Jo written by Joanna Goddard and her team. She seems like a very genuine person, and I enjoy hearing about her travels and fashion picks, relationship challenges and stories about raising two boys in Brooklyn. She just published an account of her recent trip to San Francisco to see her father and sister, and they drove north to Mendocino and stayed in the nicest inn called the Blair House Inn .
It turns out the Blair House Inn was the set of that old 1990s television show “Murder, She Wrote” starring Angela Lansbury. Do you remember that one? The charming lady detective used to say things like, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.” Or “Just as I suspected. When under stress, the English always go for a teapot.” Omg, dying.
Anyway, you have to see the photos of the inn. So gorgeous. Now I’m dying to go there myself!
Spotlight on Bethany Beach Books
Many authors I know have about a dozen bookshops they visit on tour, stores that support local authors and are run by just about the kindest booksellers in the industry. One of those bookstores is Bethany Beach Books on the Delaware shore.
I popped inside over the weekend to say hello and melted on the spot. They had all of my novels front and center in their beach reads section. I signed a stack, left a note for the manager, who I adore, and left with the last copy of Zadie Smith’s The Fraud.
If you’re ever in town, stop in the shop. It’s such a well-curated bookstore!
So so true, Brooke, about the writing life. Thank you for this beauty!
-- "...at times when you’re writing, you feel you’re under water and treading to stay afloat. But then the water recedes, the overwhelming sense that you may be failing retreats, too, and suddenly, you can see the floor again."
Brooke, I was at Oceans Calling last weekend too! I can't believe we were in the same crowd! So sorry about your poor house.