Joan Didion once said, “Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.” I’m trying to figure out when she meant by that, since to me all writing is shaping something into the finished thing. And both my novels — fiction, obviously — have taken considerable research. Even…

Oh, bliss. In the past two days I’ve managed to write over 2,000 words on my new novel, which makes me SO happy, and on top of that, I’m told the temperature will drop to the sixties by tomorrow and that it might well be gray and rainy. Joy! I see a directly connection between…

The weight of the sky on the Yorkshire moors. The ends of trips are, like any liminal states, difficult both to navigate and describe. There’s the physical stuff, of course – mounds of laundry, stacks of mail, all those must-do things that had been put aside for the trip, like washing the windows, getting the…

I said I’d come back to York, and I’ll do so now, from a very strange hotel in Hartlepool (more on that below) So, York. Arriving, we took a bus from our hotel just up Tadcaster Road, into the walled center of town. A last gasp of warm weather and sunshine had called the entire…

My Best Beloved and I are in the Yorkshire moors and after a day of climbing about the ruins of Whitby Abbey on the wild, windswept headlands, I am exhausted and exhilarated at once. We drove up from York yesterday — and I’ve yet to write about that fantastic experience, although I will in the…

My Best Beloved and I are in Bury-St.-Edmonds, where, indeed, St. Edmonds is buried in the great cathedral. We are tired, and a bit footsore, and looking forward to a good curry, a bath and a good night’s sleep before heading up to York tomorrow. My last day in Zurich was sublime since it began…

Step one on the Anglo-Saxon Tour – Zurich. Okay, that technically isn’t ON the tour, but since my Beloved has business here, we’re stopping off for a few days. We landed about 9:00 a.m. yesterday and, because our room wasn’t ready yet, we took a walk through the nearby lakeside arboretum. The mature beech trees…

I’m going on a trip. This means that later today I will stand in the middle of my bedroom, and have a small, but intense, hissy-fit. I will be surrounded by raincoats, pants, sweaters, jackets, scarves, shoes – LOTS of shoes – jeans, dress pants, pajamas, t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, and underpants. I will have open…