It wasn’t the best timing, but what can you do. 

Some friends invited us to stay with them on an island in Maine where everybody drives around on golf carts and there are twenty beaches that you can visit every day. 

We stayed in a “camp” but that’s really just a Maine word for summer house, apparently.  Because this was a beautiful summer home on the water with huge windows, running water and three bedrooms.

Some people live in their camps all summer. The island shuts down for the winter. Which gives it a magical, summer-time-only feeling, time out of time, out there, on the island.

While we were on vacation, we put an offer on another house in Richmond.  I only had about a thousand panic attacks about it.

“Why don’t we just buy a house out here?” I asked my husband.  “Let’s buy a camp and live in it instead.”

We swirled drinks on the deck.  We looked at the water.  It was so beautiful.  So different than our hot little square of burned grass and broken glass back in the city.

“Because we need to get paid,” my husband said.  “We need to eat.”

Which is true.

But you can always dream, right?

While there, I got some troubling news about the two big things I’m trying to bring to market:

My house

My latest writing project

So I felt like this:

Even though the scenery was like this:

It was a bit of a waste of prime waterfront real estate.

But what can you do?  Put one foot in front of the other.  And try to figure it out.

Aside from that, we ate ice cream and frozen custard, we went for boat rides, played putt-putt golf and watched outdoor movies while sitting on folding chairs and wrapped in blankets.

I loved being with my son and my sister and my nephews and my family who live too many states away, waking up every day knowing they were there, close to me, and thinking about the day ahead and wondering what we were going to fill it with.

Even though we didn’t have any port in the house.  Just red wine.

But it made the evening pass. Fast and giddy and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Which is good when you’ve got in-laws clogging up the joint.

Also, all are highly recommended for upcoming summer vacations.

Speaking of…do you have suggestions for me? I’m in desperate need of something to read on my upcoming summer vacations. (I have 2 this summer and I’m so excited).  Please recommend something, I’d love to check it out.

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Absolutely breathtaking.  Just my favorite thing that I’ve read this year.  What style.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

So much fun.  Really lives up to the hype.  And wow, I didn’t know YA could be this bloody.  But it can…and it works.  Bravo.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron

I liked this main character so much.  For a young misanthrope, he’s very likeable.  And the descriptions of New York in summer are dead on.

Can’t believe how much I missed it.

I took down the drapes and now have a clear view.

Which is good because I have more work to do than I thought.

It’s been years since I’ve been without a computer. I felt gutted these past three weeks without a desk to turn to. 

Ever since graduate school, my computer has been at the center of my life. It happened when I was learning how to be a writer (which I still am, to a certain degree). But this was when I had really decided to be a writer — quit my job, left my boyfriend, moved out of town — kind of started.

I rented an apartment with an enclosed patio at the very back that I thought would be perfect. It was all windows, trees and bougainvillea in the distance. I thought it was exactly what an aspiring writer needed to create great fiction. 

But it turned out that it was cold and drafty back there. It was easy to forget about. And I was afraid. I was always afraid.  Having that special room, just for writing, made it seem like such a big deal.  Each time I went in there, I got a case of the nerves. 

Because it was time To Write. 

It was time to Get Serious. 

It scared the living crap out of me.

It was easy to close the door and just not think about it.  

Then I moved and rented two rooms at the very top of a rich lady’s mansion.  I put my computer in the kitchen, in the middle of the apartment, in the center of my life, and that’s when everything changed.

That’s when I started writing every day. That’s when I had to look at my computer and ask myself: Did you write today? And if the answer was no, that was easy enough to fix. Just sit down and start. 

I started writing in the mornings, instead of at night.  I started to finish things and send them out and scratch out a few publications, which has always been difficult and still is, to be honest.  

But the biggest thing was moving that computer.  Putting it in the center, always.

And now I’m back at work again, after a strange, unexpected, foggy break. Thank God for credit cards. 

Even if it means I’m not street.

He draws pictures of robots obsessively.  I asked him why and he said, “That’s a dumb question.”

He was rough around the edges with a scruffy beard and wearing cut-off jean shorts.  His teeth were brown.  He didn’t want his picture taken.  But I admired the hell out of him.

Because he said he didn’t need money.

“You don’t need money,” he said.

He didn’t have a day job, didn’t need one.  He said he was living cheap, sleeping on people’s couches.  It wasn’t hard, he said.

This isn’t news.  I know this.  If you want to be a writer, you need to know this too.  It should be your mantra:

Live cheap.

Live cheap.

Live cheap.

I really should purchase a new computer, but I keep putting it off because buying anything over $100 makes me break out into hives.

And I wonder, how does the graffiti artist get a computer?  How does he pay for his art supplies?  Thank God I’m a writer and all I need is a pen and paper.   And a computer, really, if I want to be honest.

But then I know another story about a fellow artist who called up all his friends when he needed money and asked them to give it to him.   As a fellowship, a gift, a non-repayable loan.

It even worked, once or twice, I think.

But I could never go there.  I do believe, at the end of the day, it’s no one’s responsibility to provide for me but my own.  I chose this dream, no one else did.

But that still means I don’t have a computer.

I think I can fix that this weekend, without paying out huge cash money.  I just have to get tricky.  More later.

Now that my agent uses a Kindle, I no longer have to worry about printing out my manuscripts on nice paper from a nice printer or fret about finding the perfect manuscript box.

Finding the perfect manuscript box used to be quite an affair. It was a quest of mythic proportions, at least in my little world.

I swear to God, it took at least six weeks to find it.  I didn’t want to send my manuscript in a box that had Kinko’s or Staples all over it.

I wanted a clean, white box. I wanted it to say the title of my novel and nothing else. I wanted it to look perfect.

I tracked down a local copy shop where they had the perfect manuscript boxes but you had to print your work there.  So I printed my manuscript there and it cost something like $75, which is a lot when you’re broke, and it messed up all the margins.  So I had to chuck it.  But who cared!  I had the perfect white manuscript box.  I got the clerk to give me 5 more for 10 cents each.  And I horded them for all future unwritten manuscripts.

Last time I sent my agent a manuscript, I spent a good week digging around in my closet for that perfect white manuscript box, spending a chunk of change printing up the manuscript and then schlepping it all down to the downtown post office where you never can find any parking and sending the whole thing FedEx because it was a very important affair, at least to me.  And everybody knows nothing signifies VIP like a FedEx box.

I waited a few days, pins and needles, and then my agent emailed me back saying, “Would you be so kind to send your MS via email? I read everything on my Kindle now.”

Who knew?! Technology.  I tell you.

Now, one click of the email and you’re done.  Six months, a year’s worth of work, two year’s worth, whatever, and it’s off with one click of the mouse.  Easy peasy.

And then you wait.  And it doesn’t feel real.  It’s just a bunch of words that exist only in the ether.  It feels weird. Like that whole printing process and finding the right box and taking it to the post office where the post office master wraps it up like the holy grail and you say a silent prayer over it…I don’t know, it just made it feel real in a way, that I was finished, that I had written a book and now I was going to send it out into the world and whatever was going to happen to it was going to happen to it and I just had to let it go.

But I don’t feel that way now, which is weird. Because I know that I’m finished, but I don’t feel finished. And I wonder what the hell I’ve been doing with my time and if I’ve been wasting it and what is the point anyway and maybe I should have gone into something like real estate or investing but I’ve never been any good with money and the only thing I’ve ever really cared about are words — no matter where you find them, in books, online, or even on a Kindle.

I was in the middle of working on something when my computer made a strange sound, went black and dropped dead. 

Maybe it had had enough.

I’m going to take this as a sign.

Eff it. That’s it’s time to buy a new laptop on eBay.

But basically, it’s this and it only works with digital clocks:

Everytime a clock shows a number that could be exactly the same in reverse, you get to make a wish. 

2:12.  Wish.

5:55. Wish.

But 12:12, no wish.

It’s amazing how many wishes you can pack into a few hours. Especially between 1 and 3 a.m.

I always wish for the same thing.  Always, always.  Until there’s no point in wishing for it anymore.