“Who can become lost in a narrative,
if all he can think of is the end?”
–Mark Doty (from “Lament-Heaven”)

Once the holidays are past I’m always eager to hunker down and get back to work. The cold and dark make it easier to tune out the world and find that meditative place from which inspiration flows. While I love the other seasons, and am a warm-weather person, I find there’s something wild and bracing about winter that invigorates. Nightfall comes early, and I give myself permission to stop work, get cozy, and read before the fire.

From my studio window, Mount Hope Bay is more visible in winter with the leaves gone, and at this time of year the sun sets almost directly in front of me. I watch to see if it’s going to be a beautiful sunset, and if it is, I dash down to the water to take way too many photos and soak it all in.

Especially in these dark days, both metaphorically and (if you live in the north) in actuality, it’s so important to do what we can to nourish our souls.

The Writing Life: Unraveling Revision

In a recent meeting of my writing group, we talked about the revision process, specifically deep revision that goes beyond playing with word choice and sentence style and focuses primarily on structure or story. We asked this question: How do you know when what you’re doing refines and improves your vision versus when you are, essentially, making a complete mess of things? What if you lose the spark and creative impulse that drove you to the work in the first place?

What we came away with is that there’s no real answer. Only your own intuition and gut sense can guide you. There’s always a chance that at some point you’ll realize you’ve gone too far, that you’ve whittled away so much that all you’re left with is a toothpick.

Writing a novel is such an intricate and difficult process; it often proceeds by fits and starts over many months and years—at least mine do. It’s so easy to fall into a mental fog, and I speak for myself when I say that often I “lose the plot” in all senses of the term. Right now, as I’m working on a pretty significant revision, things do feel as if they’re coming undone. I worry that I’m unraveling so much that – to switch from wood-working to a knitting metaphor—I’ll soon have a mass of yarn at my feet and no discernible garment left at all.

Still, I plug along. I console myself that earlier versions of my work in progress are in my computer to go back to if needed. It also helps that I kept a journal where I played with ideas and themes before starting to develop the story. Rereading those initial inspirations help ground me.

It’s also hugely helpful to read about other authors’ processes and dithering. We all go through this. And we all have to find our own ways out of these labyrinths.

Life on the Coast: Win with Wind

One of the biggest environmental issues facing Montauk in the years just before I left was the question of offshore windfarms and a proposal to build South Fork Wind. Some didn’t want their ocean views ruined, some worried about the effect of turbines on wildlife, and the fishing community feared impacts on their industry. The environmental community cared most about the benefits of renewables (the windmill’s clean energy would replace an estimated CO₂ equivalent to emissions from 60,000 car a year) and was fully in favor once accommodations were made to protect birds, whales, and fish after studying their migration patterns. We could look to Block Island (R.I.) as well. That first commercial wind farm had begun delivering electricity there in 2016, and the community was touting its beyond-expectation success. Before the windfarm the island had relied on polluting noisy generators; with the windfarm the cost of electricity was less than a third of what it would have been. Even better, it turned out that the underwater structures of the turbines create artificial reefs that attract fish. It was a win all around, and on Long Island, over time, the objections melted away. The turbines are barely discernable on even the clearest days; the fishing community is mainly in support; and the wildlife—from birds to whales—are well protected.

So I was pleased when I moved to Rhode Island to learn that Ǿrsted, the company that put in the five-turbine demonstration project on Block Island as well as the 12-turbine South Fork Wind, had Revolution Wind in the works here. Then early last year the Trump administration abruptly pulled the plug on all wind projects, whether already in process or not. Revolution Wind was already 85% complete, would power 350,000 homes, and its 1,000+ union workers were suddenly out of work.

Trump is notoriously anti-wind power; he calls wind energy “the scam of the century.” Luckily the courts ruled in favor of allowing those that had already received federal permits to continue. Trump wasn’t willing to let go, however, and again in December halted five wind projects, this time citing national security concerns (claiming that the spinning turbines could interfere with radar). Thankfully this latest pretext for shutting down renewable energy was recently dismissed, and wind farms in New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island will be able to get back on schedule. I’m cautiously optimistic they’ll make it to the finish line and help with a continued push for clean energy for the planet.

Book Recommendation

A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko

I focus on novels with a sense of place, but this nonfiction book is so spectacular a piece of writing that I just have to spread the word. The story is of two friends who, over the course of several trips and with a lot of help, succeed at a risky end-to-end traverse the Grand Canyon, one of the toughest hikes in the world. The book tells of the duo’s hubris and folly in attempting this initially without proper preparation and how, after mishaps and guidance, they come to complete the project. There are many reasons to read this book: for one, as a story of adventure and excitement, which will truly keep you on the edge of your seat and turning pages; but even more for the fascinating lore: history, geology, and the stories of the original peoples and tribes who have inhabited the Park from the earliest times to the present. For those of us who will never hike the Canyon, this book is the closest you will get.

Most compelling for me is the sheer gorgeousness of the writing:

“The light spilling down the limestone turned the face of each cliff into forked rivers of fire. There were pink pools and riffles, eddies where the rose-tinted currents coiled and spun, and whirlpools the color or a freshly opened cantaloupe. This was light made liquid, as if someone had melted down the stained-glass windows of every cathedral in France and poured the emulsion over the stone.”

Fedarko concludes the book with a plea against commercialization of the Park. “The longer we spent and the farther we ventured, the more deeply we understood that in the months and years to come, it might no longer be possible to complete a walk such as this without colliding against changes so profound that the land would never again be the same.…Haunted—that’s how we walked. Haunted by what we saw and heard, and by the knowledge that the future that was bearing down on the canyon was…already transforming the place.”

Although there’s an argument to be made that helicopters and trams can bring the experience of the Canyon to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it, A Walk in the Park speaks most eloquently for the value of leaving some magnificent and rare places completely alone.

Snow and ICE

A few shots from recent snowfalls…and a recent vigil against a different kind of ICE.