The Novelist Heals

For­get any roman­tic images you might have of nov­el-writ­ing: that it’s noth­ing but star­ing out big pic­ture win­dows at the sea and auto­graph­ing copies of your books.

No, unfor­tu­nate­ly nov­el-writ­ing, even if you love it, is a drain­ing, soul-suck­ing enter­prise.

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Ten months lat­er, with the help of his neigh­bor’s faith­ful bea­gle, the nov­el­ist is near­ly healed.

While writ­ing my nov­els, I strive so hard to make each one the very best it can be, the work takes every­thing from me, leav­ing me cre­ative­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly spent.

Since I fin­ished A Truth Stranger than Fic­tion last Decem­ber, I’ve writ­ten very lit­tle new mate­r­i­al. True to form (this hap­pens every time I fin­ish a book), for most of this year I ques­tioned whether I would ever write again. But as my best friends know, I start­ed writ­ing again recently—after a 10-month peri­od of heal­ing and refill­ing the tank.

“When the tank runs dry you’ve only to leave it alone and it will fill up again in time.” —Mark Twain

So what did I do this year to heal, to refill the tank? Let me count the ways…

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I dust­ed and mailed copies of A TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION to friends, fans and review­ers.

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I did a lot of cross-coun­try ski­ing.

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I went cross-coun­try ski­ing with my dad, Big Al.

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I went cross-coun­try ski­ing with Alexas and drank beer.

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I spent time with my best friend Bri­an’s dog, Mil­ly.

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I cel­e­brat­ed my 45th birth­day with my best friend Bri­an and his fam­i­ly. Here, his boys made me a birth­day cake: my favorite—gingerbread.

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I went to the top of a moun­tain above East­hamp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts. This is the view that inspired Dr. Seuss’s Grinch and his view of Whoville.

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I start­ed a new pho­tog­ra­phy project: inter­est­ing barns. This one, on Chest­nut Ridge Road out­side of Mill­brook, has been stand­ing since I was a child. I would pass it on the way to my grand­par­ents’ from Maine.

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I hung out with my best friend Jason Scott, the Huck Finn to my Tom Sawyer.

Shooting

I went shoot­ing with my friend Bob Hanaburgh, here fir­ing Dako­ta’s gun: a Sig Sauer .45 ACP. I shot very well, once scor­ing a 77 out of a pos­si­ble 80.

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I vis­it­ed the top of Mount Holyoke (what a view!) with Alexas.

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I took serendip­i­tous photos—this one on the Vas­sar Col­lege cam­pus.

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I took pho­tos of the place I love so much—the Mill­brook coun­try­side, a.k.a. “Welling­ton” from ONE HUNDRED MILES.

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I vis­it­ed The Breakers—the Van­der­bilt “cot­tage” in New­port, RI—and the Ten­nis Hall of Fame.

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I spent a week­end on Cape Cod.

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I watched kite-surf­ing on the Cape.

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I ate the best scal­lops I’ve had in 20 years, at a restau­rant in Province­town on the Cape.

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I walked the beach­es of the Cape Cod Nation­al Seashore, my trusty note­book ready to take notes.

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I took long walks around Millbrook—here on my favorite road, Wood­stock Road, which appears in 100 MILES and A TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION.

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I snuck up on a young buck deer eat­ing wind­falls beneath an apple tree.

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And herons over­look­ing still ponds.

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I found cov­ered bridges in Ver­mont…

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…and drove through them.

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I played golf with my best friend Bri­an (pic­tured), and anoth­er time with my best friend Jason.

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Golf in Dover, Ver­mont.

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I cap­tured idyl­lic Ver­mont autumn scenes.

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I stum­bled on a Ver­mont her­itage fes­ti­val and church rum­mage sale.

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Inspired by the scene, I sat down and began writ­ing a new sto­ry.

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I relaxed and enjoyed myself.

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I spent a week­end with Alexas at my friend’s vaca­tion house in Ver­mont. We relaxed in the hot tub, mean­dered through the state look­ing at the foliage, and spent evenings in front of a fire.

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I saw amaz­ing autumn scenes like this one.

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I reread two or three dozen of my favorite sto­ries by Guy de Mau­pas­sant…

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…my favorite sto­ries by Ray­mond Carv­er…

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I watched the HD restora­tions of the Jere­my Brett Sher­lock Holmes series (that mod­ern SHERLOCK can suck it).

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I’ve been study­ing French intense­ly, as well as a bit of Span­ish and Ger­man.

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I made an apple pie.

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I start­ed play­ing chess again.

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And I began writ­ing again. :) Both indoors…

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…and out­doors. Alone, and with…

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…my neigh­bor’s faith­ful bea­gle, Goliath.

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By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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