How much longer…

How much longer… I thought, looking out onto the hazy bay just before sunrise. It stormed yesterday, but you wouldn’t know it by the almost perfectly smooth surface of the lake.
How much longer…
It isn’t even a question any more, but rather a whisper sighed in an empty room over an empty bay by a shadow of the person of I used to be. They all left years ago: my husband, my children. They could’ve at least let me keep the cat, but they took her as well. She’d like it here, plenty of mice for her to hunt.
How much longer…
This house really is too large for me. When it was full of people it didn’t seem quite as large, but now with just me to roam its halls it seems as large as the mountains looming in the distance. I know its every corner and stairway as I know the lines on my own hands. If I close my eyes I can see the tapestries that used to hang on the walls. If I hold my breath I can almost hear my daughter running through the rooms, her laughter sweeter than any music. Marianne, my youngest, my only daughter. She made me feel young again when she came into this world. I just wish I had more time to hold her in my arms. My children are long gone. Their grandchildren must have children of their own by now.
How much longer…
I wish I could have gone with them, after them, but I can’t leave my home. I am part of it just as much as it is part of me. Even with the broken windows and leaves on the floor we stand together. When it goes I go.
I hope it won’t be much longer.

Writing and the Interwebz

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a writer tries to work in immediate proximity to an Internet-capable device said writer’s productivity is going to trend toward zero with lightning speed. I had a chance to observe this phenomenon first hand last week while I was on vacation.
Being on vacation was wonderful, of course. The only way it could’ve been better is if it was longer than a week and if the mosquitoes weren’t quite as vicious, but I’ll take what I can get. I had brilliant plans for writing and reading. I told myself I would write at least one chapter, read 2 books, critique a friend’s manuscript, clean the house extra thoroughly (not my favorite thing in the world) and generally relax to my heart’s content. Here’s what happened instead: I critiqued a friend’s manuscript, wrote 5 pages longhand (a chapter is about 12 pages), and… finished watching Fringe on Netflix, baked 3 different desserts, spent a lot of time on Pinterest, cleaned out my email account, updated my spreadsheet of books that have made it on the NYT best seller lists so far this year (it’s one of the sources that feed my reading list for the next year), and Facebooked like the site was getting shut down any day now. I did not thoroughly clean the house. I did take the car to the mechanic’s.
Isn’t it kind of sad that the only decent stretch of writing that I have done this entire week happened while I was at the mechanic’s waiting for my car to have its maintenance? In retrospect it’s not kind of sad, it’s really sad. They had no internet and neither does my phone, so instead of checking to see who else posted what pictures I actually sat down and wrote. And the worst part? I actually hated when the clerk came to tell me my mini-tank was ready! I wanted to stay and write some more!
So what did I learn from this experience? First of all, I learned that I have zero willpower when it comes to the siren call of the computer screen. Secondly, that no matter how much I love it, writing is work, and it requires a lot more effort than even baking a phyllo dough apple strudel. Since asking my husband to hide the cable modem during writing time is just plain embarrassing I think I’ll have to relocate outside if I want to get any words on the page without getting distracted by the internet. I shudder to think what will happen when winter rolls around.