Roomette: Left side as you enter

Looking straight into the roomette

Right side

First of all, you have to imagine the “economy bedroom” on Amtrak Superliner cars. The seats are wide and quite roomy, but that is all there is in the roomette, two seats that face each other, window on one side, door to hallway on the other. If we both sit straight upright, our knees touch. If we want to stretch out, we have to adjust feet and legs to stay out of each others’ way. The whole thing is just over six feet front to back and maybe 3-1/2 feet side to side. Very cozy for two.

Now at night, the two seats slide together and lie flat to form the lower bunk. The upper folds out from the wall above. It’s quite narrow. If I lie on my side with knees pulled up, my butt’s against the back wall and my knees actually hang off the edge. It’s also not very high. If I lie on my back I can bend my knees but there is no room to sit up. This led to interesting contortions when trying to put my pants on this morning.

But wait, let’s go back to actually getting into the thing last night.

Roomette info on Amtrak’s website

Scroll down to “Virtual bedrooms” and click on day and night views to see what the roomette looks like. Warning: objects are much, much smaller than they appear.

There are these two little steps next to the rear-facing seat that provide access to the upper bunk. So when the bunk is folded down from the wall, you climb up the steps, aim your butt in and sort of roll into the space. Then you realize that the blankets are folded tightly under the yoga mat mattress and you’re lying on top of them with no way to pull them loose, so you roll legs back out, carefully find the upper step with your foot, and lower yourself to the floor. Untuck the blankets and sheet. Climb the steps, aim your butt in and roll into the berth. Wiggle out of jeans and fold them, find a place near your head to put them. There is, I’m happy to say, a little net hammock for personal items and a pocket on the wall for your eyeglasses. Thoughtful and well-laid out. So everything is stowed away, I’m under the blanket, and all is good until I needed to turn onto my tummy, which is how I usually sleep.

As I noted above, when I’m on my side my butt’s against the wall and my knees are hanging off, which means that turning over is a delicate, inch-by-inch process. Turn a bit, ooch back until butt’s against wall again, turn some more, ooch back, etc. Now I’m on my stomach and I realize there is one major problem: my feet are jammed uncomfortably against the wall at the bottom and one is turned at an angle that is going to cause major pain in short order. I maange to ooch upwards to give my toes some breathing room, but then I have a problem with the arm I usually put under the pillow. Eventually, though, I find a happy medium that gives me just enough room as long as I don’t breathe too deeply.

Then I realize I forgot to hook the safety harness.

Five minutes later, after I have carefully ooched my way round to my back, I find and hook one end, only to realize there is no frickin’ way I can even reach the other hook. I’ll just have to remember not to roll over in my sleep and hope that the train doesn’t jolt sideways during the night. Five more minutes of turning and careful positioning, and I’m back in sleeping position.

Now my arm’s gone to sleep.

Sigh.

Eventually, though, I do sleep. I’m aware of the train making several station stops during the night, but they don’t really keep me awake. Once I got comfortable, the rocking motion was actually quite soothing. I could have used a light blanket, but otherwise I was fine.

Morning. Time to get up, put on my jeans and go across to the bathroom to finish getting dressed. Since I can’t sit up in the upper bunk and the lower one takes up the whole width of the roomette, I have to unfold my pants, lie on one side, slide one foot in, then the other. Pull jeans up to knees. Roll sideways, aim toward the upper step, and try to get one foot down without tripping over the pants legs. Manage that, get both feet on second step so I can at least straighten knees completely while bent over at the waist, get pants pulled up and zipped, reach down and slide roomette door open, step down over bottom bunk into hallway. (Robert has slept through all of this and is still out like a light.)

The bathroom is incredibly tiny but at least there is room enough to stand up straight. I can finish putting on my unmentionables and get my jeans straightened and zipped properly. Robert, who didn’t ever undress at all, just needs to put his shoes on and he’s ready to go to breakfast. When we get back, the beds have been made up and the seats are back to normal.

Thus endeth the first night on the train.

Stay tuned for our next major adventure: Shower on the train!

Find Part I here.

Day 2: Set a daily goal

Writing is a journey. Some wanderers are comfortable setting out with nothing but a sack lunch and change of clothes, willing to follow the road wherever it leads, as far as it goes. Most of us, though, need to know the destination and how long it will take to get there. We want a map and a daily itinerary.

NaNoWriMo provides this itinerary by mandating that you write 1,667 words per day to stay on target. Your goal can certainly be a number of words, but I find it easier to write in chunks. Sometimes, when I have other things that must be done today, I’ll allot a certain period of time to write. More often, though, my goal will be to write a particular chunk of words in one sitting.

My experience has been that counting words instead of outcome creates far too much painful awareness of the mechanics of writing. I don’t get lost in the story or crafting the exact desired result from my copy — I’m sitting there staring at the screen, thinking “Where the heck can I stretch this to come up with 243 more #$%#@ words?”

That way lies flab. Excess. Guaranteed fat that will later require surgical excision.

Set your goal in such a way that you can enjoy the journey. If that means today you only cover 10 miles through the mountains while looking at the scenery, you’ve met your goal for the day.

Tomorrow: Part III. Want the update by email? Sign up at right.

I don’t know how many of those who start the month actually complete their 50,000 words. I suspect fewer than half. And of those, even fewer will continue the daily practice of writing — even those who desperately want to be writers.

For me, the intense 1,667-words-per-day sprint just doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. I’ve done the “get your characters and outline ready ahead of time” dance. I’ve done the “just write the words, even if they are dreck; December is for editing” waltz too. I’m a tortoise, I suppose. But I write every morning and I have done for years.

Every. Morning. And my first novel is nearly complete. A sequel is in the works already. I have a third novel that I started two decades ago in outline form, and a fourth that just presented itself to me, demanding to be written, in October.

One bucking and three in the chute: a pretty good rodeo lineup for a tortoise.

Writing is a habit. Like any other habit, it takes time to coalesce. If you were making homemade jelly from gorgeous autumn grapes, you’d add pectin to firm up your jelly and make it a successful product. If your product is writing, you need to add the ingredients for success to the fruit of your ideas in much the same way.

Join me over the next seven days as I show you those ingredients that have helped make my writing practice a solid, gorgeously jelled daily practice. Don’t miss a single tip — sign up to get new updates by email, over there in the righthand sidebar.

Day 1: Carve out a dedicated time for writing

Start by considering your personal energy levels and daily schedule. Are you most creative and energized early in the morning? Late at night, right before bed?

For me, early morning is my time to write. My brain is clear and words flow easily. Right before bed each night, I review where my story is and where it’s going next, what I need to write in the morning, and then I sleep. My unconscious mind nibbles at it all night long and in the morning I’m ready to commit the next chunk to paper.

In the years when I worked for someone else and had to have butt planted in chair at 8:00 am, I arranged with myself to wake up earlier in order to do my creative work. At 4:30 in the morning, the world is asleep. My children are still in bed. The birds haven’t even started chirping yet. The precious quiet, especially when I know I have only an hour or so of it, is expansive. It opens possibilities before me and begs to be filled with my words.

Now, when I work for myself, I still schedule my writing time first thing in the morning. It isn’t quite as early now. My children are grown and I no longer plant my butt in someone else’s chair at 8:00 am. But the first item on my To Do list each morning is still the same:

Write.

Tomorrow: Part II. Want the update by email? Sign up at right.

In March of this year, my husband and I took a long trip by train across America — literally from sea to sea. We began in Birmingham (Alabama), rode the Crescent to New Orleans, the City of New Orleans to Chicago (with Arlo Guthrie singing in my head for eight hundred miles), and the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco. After a gorgeous week in the Bay Area, we took the Zephyr back to Chicago. From there, we rode the Capitol Limited to Washington DC and home to Birmingham on the Crescent. Eight thousand miles by rail in 23 days.

Map of our planned 8000-mile train journey

The main purpose for this epic trip was to ride the Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco. (Even though the map above shows Chicago to San Francisco through Portland, we didn’t go that way. More about that later, too.)

You see, I’m writing a book — a quilt-related novel set on the original California Zephyr in 1949.

“Research?” said my husband when I told him of the information I was finding on the Internet: lists of cars on the train and their floor plans, the route guide, even the dining car menus from 1949. “Research? The best research is to go live it! When are we leaving?”

So we went (learning a great deal about Amtrak and train travel along the way), and I came home with a hundred pages of notes, almost a thousand photographs, a deep, visceral appreciation of the sheer size and beauty of this country of ours, and the memories of a lifetime. (I’ll share some of those in later blog posts.)

The Great Hall at Chicago's Union Station

We came home and I started writing. I had actually written the first chapter, part of which takes place in Chicago’s Union Station, before we left and without ever having seen the place. (That would not have been possible ten years ago, without the Internet. But having been there made it easy to write in a much more real voice.)

The story: It’s just before Christmas 1949, and young Emma Carmichael is riding the Zephyr to San Francisco to marry her prosperous banker fiancé. Her grandmother, sad to see her leave home and unable to attend the wedding, arranges a quilting treasure hunt for Emma. She sends mystery quilt patterns to help Emma create her trousseau of thirteen quilts which tradition demands that each new bride bring to her marriage. But Emma has other things on her mind besides quilts. This journey is not quite as uneventful as she had imagined….

The novel, along with a block-of-the-month quilting program, is being published at Silver Road to California. You can read the Prologue and find out more about the novel here. At the end of the story, readers will receive two setting diagrams to use to finish their blocks into a complete quilt.

Silver Road to California is the first in a series of block of the month quilting novels I’ll be publishing during the next few years. I hope you have as much fun reading as I have writing!

And if you check out the site, please leave a comment here and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you!

This morning, it occurred to me that perhaps I allowed myself to be distracted repeatedly because I was afraid. I was afraid that I had nothing to say about it that would be useful. I was afraid that I didn’t have all the answers.

I’ve hit the same wall before when making art. Start a piece and never finish it because I’m afraid it’s trite, or the colors aren’t quite perfect, or it doesn’t “say” anything profound. I’m afraid it won’t be brilliant, so I never allow it to be born at all. It’s easier just to take another class, or buy another book, or find yet another distraction.

I can’t start making art or writing to you until I know I’m going to be perfect. And I’m scared I won’t ever be perfect.

On the wall above my desk I have a magenta Post-It note for times like these, a note with one very simple imperative sentence:

I don’t have all the answers, and on one level I am very worried that I can’t be useful unless I do. But here I am, doing it scared, writing this to open discussion.

The floor is open to talk about fear, perfection, and procrastination. How do you deal with it, and how can I help?

The last Amtrak morning; Click for larger version

It’s appropriate today because this is another “last morning” for us. Today, my husband retires from 32 years with our local county government. Starting tomorrow, we embark on the third phase of our lives together: newlyweds, parents, empty nest retirees.

It’s been a good journey so far.

Here’s to the rest of it.

This week, a random Twitter message hit me between the eyes and made me really start rethinking that lifelong view. All by itself, the message was pretty simple:

“Do what only you can do.”

I’m the only one who can write Silver Road to California and the other several novels knocking at the door of my brain. I’m the only one who can design the quilts and projects that are in my head. I’m the only one who can walk and exercise my body. I’m the only one who can eat the proper food, in proper quantities, at proper intervals to keep my body and brain working at their best.

I’m not the only one who can do laundry or wash dishes or cook. I’m not the only one who can do bookkeeping for my business — and I’ve already found the perfect partner to help out with that chore. There are others in the world who can write copy or design logos and headers.

It’s going to cost some money to outsource some of these things. But if I had a gazillion dollars and lay on my deathbed, that stack of money wouldn’t buy me one more hour to do the things only I can do.

James Taylor said it back in 1990 and I didn’t pay attention.

“Time may be money, but money can’t buy time.” (from “Sun on the Moon,” Never Die Young)

Beginning today, I’m paying attention.

Click for larger image

Pleasant Grove, Alabama: April 27, 2011

So now you have changed it, and your log-in username is something else, perhaps your first name. Go to your profile page: Sign in and click on “Howdy, (your name)!” in the upper righthand corner. Look down at the section headed “Name.”

Your username is the one you set up in place of the insecure “admin.” But note the box marked “Display name publicly as.” It shows your new and more secure username to the public on every post you write… so you haven’t gained much by changing it!

The WordPress developers have thought of this. Take this next very simple step to completely hide your login username: Fill in the First Name, Last Name, and nickname fields, choosing something completely different for “nickname.”

Scroll down and click “Update Profile.” Now go back up to the “Display name publicly as” section. A dropdown menu will show you several choices: FirstName, FirstName LastName, LastName FirstName, etc. Pick one, then “Update Profile” again.

Now your chosen display name — NOT the same as your login username — will show on all your posts.

PS: That “nickname” field that is required? That is useful in cases where you don’t want your name to appear as author — if you are writing incognito or using a pen name. If neither the FirstName or LastName fields is filled out, the display name will default to “nickname.” You could log in as Laura and post as Peanut.