The Red Stone

In two hours I leave for a five day writing retreat in the Sierras. I'm so excited to go -- even if it means pulling out the sweaters I just pushed to the back of my closet.

This is the third year I'm going to the "Write Retreat" which is organized by Stanford and is held at the Sierra Camp on Fallen Leaf Lake. I learned that when John Steinbeck dropped out of college he got a job building some of the cabins that still exist at the camp. There is nothing more inspiring and humbling than walking by Steinbeck's handiwork on your way to breakfast each day.

So what am I bringing with me?

-- The draft of my memoir (subject of the champagne over the weekend) -- maybe at long last I'll have the stretch of time I keep telling myself I need to sit down and read the whole thing start to finish and figure out what's next

-- A print out of the 150 pages of fiction I started writing at Sierra Camp two years ago. We had a writing exercise in which each person was given an object that the teacher had collected while out on a walk. Mine was the red stone pictured here. Other people had twigs, leaves, pine cones, etc. Initially I felt compelled to come up with some nature theme to write about, which would be totally out of character for me. I sat for a few minutes with no idea what to do. Then I turned the stone around and looked at each side. The back side has a vein of darker red than the rest and all of a sudden it looked like red velvet to me. Then I thought about what kind of dress could be made about red velvet like that. And then I had a scene fully developed in my mind. I wrote some dialogue in that session. Then when I came home I kept on working on the characters I'd come up with. Last May I picked up the thread of the story again and when I got home that project lasted me through most of the summer. I'm hoping it will do the same again this year.