Back to the Novel, Back from Big Sky

After a three month hiatus, I'm working on my novel again. I started a new workshop with Hannah this month and have homework due tomorrow which I actually haven't done yet -- not a good sign. This is why I need Hannah -- to make me get going again. I finished 100 pages, took a break to get the girls off to college and focus on my business, and now am finding it really hard to get back into the story.

I also joined a writers group in DC, and next week they will critique my first 50 pages. I am quaking in my boots. I realize this is not the great american novel, or even deep enough to be called contemporary american fiction. It is probably best described as a beach book, or a bike book, as my friend Meg said, because it would be a good story to ride your exercise bike to. I was deeply disappointed to hear this, mind you, but consoled myself that beach and bike books aren't all bad. I decided this will be my starter book, my novel "lite," and the next one will be the real McCoy. I wishfully think I have it in me - it just isn't ready to come out yet.

So I let Meg read it this summer -- she was the first. Her feedback was good and helpful, but having these strangers read it and comment on it with me right there in the room next week is terrifying to consider. So let's change the subject, shall we?

I just got back from five days in northwest Montana, and I now understand why they call it big sky country. You look up and the sky is so vast and endless, from horizon to horizon, all around you. It's just so damn HUGE. Ringed with the Mission Mountains, the Swann Mountains, Glacier National Park, Blackfeet Reservation, and all the way into Canada, it just goes on and on and on. It is stupendous. I will never do it justice, but here are just a couple of the amazing views. One is of the vista at Many Glacier, an old inn inside Glacier that we drove eight hours round trip to see.

The sunset picture was taken right off Jane's deck in Somers, at her beautiful mountainside home called Achewa that overlooks Flathead Lake. We ate fantastic meals, ran up and down her neighbors long, steep driveways (at about 4500 feet altitude, I think), rode horses at the Bar W Ranch in Whitefish, visited Kila, where her friends Alice and Michael homesteaded the most magical 80 acres I've ever seen, and hung out in the hot tub, looking up at bazillions of stars in that great big sky. It was glorious.

To check out Achewa and Michael's incredible woodworking and life story, visit www.achewa.com. I simply cannot figure out how these darn links work.