![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/DSCN9069.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cWhat\nis it?\u201d Alexas asked me in the darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cScreaming\ncows,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd coyotes. I think the coyotes are going after the calves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh,\nthat\u2019s awful!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah,\nsad,\u201d I said, getting back under the covers, \u201cbut from a creative standpoint,\nit\u2019s pure gold. There\u2019s a story there. I\u2019m seeing a trophy wife who\u2019s tired of\ndoing bullshit committees and riding lessons and shtupping one of the\ntownies\u2026maybe she learns how to hunt and becomes a coyote vigilante.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOooh,\nI like it,\u201d Alexas said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGood.\nI\u2019ll start writing it in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\ndid, beginning a story entitled \u201cThe Mighty Huntress,\u201d about Caprice Highgate\u2019s\nmetamorphosis from trophy wife to hunter and independent woman. Revised many\ntimes, that story eventually formed the first chapter of One Hundred Miles<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the\nweeks that followed, I wrote in the mornings, and during my afternoon walks or\nbike rides into the village and around the outskirts, I began to notice other\ndetails about the countryside that I either hadn\u2019t noticed previously, or had\nbut only peripherally. There were two<\/em>\nshooting clubs within a couple miles of my apartment, and echoing from those\nplaces every day were shotgun blasts\u2014sometimes so rapid and staccato that the\nshooting sounded like Civil War skirmishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another\ndetail: houses in the area that had lain abandoned all through my childhood in\nMillbrook were now restored and invariably occupied by ambitious nouveau-riche <\/em>Manhattanites. A couple\ntimes a year, there were \u201chorse trials\u201d\u2014show jumping (dressage) and cross-country\nobstacle courses. These were events that I had never bothered to investigate\nwhen I lived in the village proper. I made a point of attending several of\nthese events and taking copious notes, notes that formed the final chapter of One Hundred Miles<\/em>, the love story of a\nManhattan book editor and a wealthy equestrienne named Titania Hammersley (by\nthe way, I got her surname from a street I frequently passed on the\nPoughkeepsie Arterial).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving a\nmile outside of the village gave me just enough distance from the place and the\npeople that I began to notice, or hear about, things that had escaped my\nattention when I was a fixture in town: for example, there was a Millbrook area\nswingers club. (I still can\u2019t believe it.) There were ongoing dramas involving a\ncertain young couple in town\u2014a hairdresser and a waiter at the diner\u2014and the\ntownspeople typically chose sides. The antediluvian Thorne and Bennett College\nbuildings had officially become eyesores. And finally, a certain contractor\u2019s\npickup truck regularly drove into a variety of Millbrook estates, estates where\nthe wives reputedly were alone during the workweek; and since these women\u2019s\nhouses couldn\u2019t all<\/em> have leaky faucets,\nthere must be another reason for the contractor going there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\ncontinued to write, I noticed that certain characters that were \u201cstars\u201d or\nnarrators of some stories reappeared in other ones. I also noticed that what I\nwas really writing was a novel, the central character of which was the place\nitself: a fictionalized version of Millbrook\u2014Wellington, NY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s\na lot of my own direct experience in One\nHundred Miles from Manhattan<\/em>, including the scene where the town doctor,\nDr. Hale, attends a lecture by a spiritual guru; that was based on a program I\nattended in New York City by the late Dr. Wayne Dyer. One of the characters with\nhis own chapter (I\u2019ll leave you to discover which one it is) is based on me and\nthe hijinks that ensued when we moved out of the village in the summer of 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At readings\nand book signings I\u2019ve been asked the following question by prospective readers\nof the novel (almost always women, by the way, who ask the question with an\nuplifted eyebrow): \u201cIs Wellington actually<\/em>\nMillbrook?\u201d Of course what they\u2019re really asking is whether what occurs between\nthe covers of the novel actually<\/em> happened<\/em>, and, if so, whether they might\nknow some of the \u201ccharacters.\u201d I usually give my most charming, enigmatic smile\u2014half\nrogue, half naughty little boy\u2014and say, \u201cWell, Wellington is inspired<\/em> by<\/em> Millbrook.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c \u2018Inspired\nby\u2019?\u201d the woman says with a frown. \u201cWhat\u2019s that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell, the characters and situations are pretty universal,\u201d I say. \u201cEvery wealthy town has conflicts between townies and hilltoppers. Every wealthy town has contractors who service<\/em> lonely trophy wives. Every wealthy town has bored rich people who dress up like English lords and shoot pheasants, or ride horses and wear their riding boots everywhere to advertise they\u2019re equestrians. Those characters exist everywhere. So, if what you\u2019re asking me is, \u2018Did the things in this book really happen?\u2019 then I\u2019d say, yes, they really did\u2014just not exactly like that, with those names, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thoroughly\nconfused at this point, the prospective reader usually grabs a copy, asks me to\nsign it, and hurries away to the cash register\u2014eager to start reading or to simply\nget the hell away from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before One Hundred Miles from Manhattan<\/em>, I\nnever would have believed that moving as little as a mile away could so\nradically shift my perspective and heighten my sensitivity to the place where I\nlived, but it did, and the proof is in the pages of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * * \n*<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote\nthe preceding section of this blog entry in the spring of 2018, back when I was\ncreating content for my social media publicist to publicize. But when I read it\nover, I decided to wait to publish the piece until I moved again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 13 years that have passed since I returned to Millbrook, the community has changed so much that it now bears absolutely no resemblance<\/em> to the small town where I graduated from high school. Thirty-two years ago, Millbrook was a lot like the one-stoplight small town in the movie The Last Picture Show<\/em>; today it\u2019s largely a bastion of wealthy, pretentious Manhattan weekenders and Westchester county transplants, whose sole contributions to the community seem to be increased property values and taxes, a plethora of Pilates and \u201chot yoga\u201d studios, increased prices at the diner and Marona\u2019s market, a profusion of Tesla automobiles, and (the one positive) a superfluity of young women in jodhpurs and chestnut riding boots. Seeing my hometown decline from a humble country village with an Agway feed store to a Philistine cesspool whose entire economy is built on real estate, antiques and \u201cgentleman farms\u201d was too much for me to bear, so I decided to move away. (But don\u2019t worry\u2026I\u2019m putting all of these negative feelings about the changed Millbrook into my next Dakota mystery.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\nwrote at the beginning of this entry, I\u2019ve moved a lot<\/em>. As a kid, I moved more often than most \u201cmilitary brats.\u201d The\nlongest I lived in one community was between the ages of 13 and 16, and the\nclosest I ever had to \u201ca home\u201d in my life was my grandparents\u2019 estate in Union\nVale (south of Millbrook). During all of my childhood moves, until I graduated\nfrom high school, the only \u201chome\u201d in my life, the only permanent place with\nstable people that I could depend on, was my grandparents\u2019 place in the Clove\nValley\u2014with its swimming pool, tennis court, trout and bass ponds, acres and\nacres of woods, and a horse farm next door. And for over 30 years since then\u2014the\nentirety of my professional writing life\u2014by necessity I\u2019ve been nomadic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, if I\nwas relatively stable at the time\u2014that is, I wasn\u2019t changing apartments every\nyear\u2014I had to shoehorn my writing life into less-than-ideal spaces and living\nsituations. This has led to Alexas and me living in apartments above or beneath\nhoarders, mentally disturbed people or recently paroled ex-cons; next door to\nnot one but two<\/em> firehouses; over garages\nand pawnshops, you name it. (True story: In 1998, we were living in an\napartment above a pawnshop in Portland, Maine when, one afternoon out of\nnowhere, said pawnshop was raided by the FBI.) With all of these distractions\nin close proximity to where I\u2019ve lived, in order to get the quiet and solitude\nI\u2019ve needed to write I\u2019ve had to find it ad\nhoc<\/em> in libraries, parks and caf\u00e9s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately\nAlexas and I are members of the Vassar College community. For the past 13 years\nI\u2019ve been able to work in Vassar\u2019s Thompson Memorial Library virtually\nunmolested. I say \u201cvirtually unmolested\u201d because, every so often, in their\noverzealousness the Security and\/or Buildings & Grounds staff at the\ncollege go on a tear testing fire alarms or banging on shit that doesn\u2019t seem\nto need fixing. Then there were the many, many times that, despite writing in a\nstudy carrel in the most remote corner of the library basement (in the Government\nDocs room), one passive-aggressive, OCD woman made a point of passing my\nworkspace during her twice-daily walk around the building\u2019s basement perimeter,\neven though she had no reason to be there; I solved that problem by setting up\na tidy Les Miserables<\/em> barricade of\nchairs in the aisle each morning, forcing her to change her route. Hey, crazy lady,\nif you\u2019re<\/em> reading this, SUUUUUUCCKK IIIIIIIITTTT!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even\nso, 90 percent of the time the Vassar library has been a great place to write,\nand I know it\u2019s been a great place to write because of how productive I\u2019ve\nbeen. In the past decade, I wrote, revised and published nine books there, and\n(counting the 600,000-word Big Book) I\u2019ve written the first drafts of eleven\nmore books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s 20\nbooks total in ten years. Not bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, as productive as I\u2019ve been in my writing life over the past decade, in order to find the increasingly elusive quiet and solitude I\u2019ve needed to write, I\u2019ve had to spend an awful lot of my time schlepping<\/em> around. And this schlepping has been complicated by having to do it with multiple bags: my work bag, which contains my computer and\/or Alphasmart Neo<\/a> to type on; journals; notepads; pencils; pens, dictionary; thesaurus; medical\/hygiene stuff (like a toothbrush & aspirin); keys; iPod; snacks; wallet; my lunch bag, which contains coolers, Thermoses, cups and utensils; and some kind of gym bag, which contains at a minimum a clean towel and a change of underwear. Then, at the end of the day, when Alexas and I drove home, I had to schlep<\/em> all of those bags back into the house, along with any groceries and other household purchases. The bottom line is, I have spent my entire adult life schlepping<\/em> crap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a\nlong time I\u2019ve wanted to get out of the schlepping<\/em>\nbusiness, and to that end, Alexas and I spent the last 18 months hunting for a\nhouse. (Since I\u2019m considering writing a book about our real estate travails, I\nwon\u2019t go into detail about them here.) I have a lot of thoughts about the real\nestate industry<\/em> in New York, but\nsuffice it to say, until the laws in New York change or until Zillow or another\nonline company disrupts the market by cutting agents out of the process, we\nwant nothing<\/em> to do with buying property\nin New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For\nover 20 years of marriage, Alexas and I have lived in one-bathroom, <600\nsquare-foot apartments. And because we wanted to live below our means and\nmaintain a small carbon footprint, we only ever allowed ourselves one car. We consistently\nsacrificed convenience and comfort in order to live simply. But we reached a\npoint where we didn\u2019t want to sacrifice anymore. When searching for a house, we\nwanted, \u00e0 la<\/em> The Jeffersons on the\n70s TV show, to \u201cmove on up.\u201d We wanted, in a word, sanctuary<\/em>. Sanctuary from neighbors and the increasingly\ncomplicated, hectic outside world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well,\nwe searched for our sanctuary for over a year and a half and couldn\u2019t find it.\nOr, in the three cases where we found it and put in very fair offers, we were\nprevented from getting it by unscrupulous real estate agents, greedy or\ndelusional sellers, or Manhattan\/Westchester douches looking to snag inexpensive\nweekend\/vacation properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I might\nsound bitter about this experience, but honestly I\u2019m not. I\u2019m grateful for what\nwe learned about ourselves, each other, and what\u2019s really important to us. More\nthan anything, it\u2019s the lost time that bothers me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time\nthat I could have been working more intensely on my books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time\nthat I can never get back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However\u2026deep-down I know this is for the best. Since quitting the house hunt in October, we found a terrific, recently remodeled townhouse apartment with three times the space. The apartment gives us almost all of the conveniences we were looking for in a house, without the hassles of owning a place and having to interact with the New York real estate market. I\u2019ll have a larger, dedicated office in which to write; we\u2019ll each have a bathroom; we can get a dog (I\u2019ve missed having a companion during the day since Sweetie shuffled off this mortal coil<\/a>); and we\u2019ll have a large workout space. The bottom line is, we don\u2019t need to own<\/em> something to get the sanctuary we\u2019ve been seeking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout\nthis 18-month ordeal, I was reminded of a number of ideas espoused by some of\nmy writer\/artist heroes regarding property ownership. Henry David Thoreau\u2019s\nmaxim that you don\u2019t own your possessions; your possessions own you. Painter\nAndrew Wyeth\u2019s statement to his wife Betsy, who, when they were flush with cash\nin the 1980s, started buying up real estate; Wyeth said to her, \u201cI don\u2019t have\nto own something to love it.\u201d And, loudest of all in my head, Ernest\nHemingway\u2019s admonition to writers to never develop what he called \u201can\nestablishment\u201d\u2014an expensive house with a big monthly nut, people on a payroll,\netc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With\nthe new apartment, I\u2019ll be getting most of the sanctuary\u2014the writing space and\nquiet I\u2019ve needed and craved\u2014without the headaches of ownership or maintaining\nan establishment, and I believe it\u2019s going to bust things wide-open for me with\nmy writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\ncan produce the equivalent of 20 books in a decade, writing and revising\nmillions of words while working largely out of a knapsack in a college library\nbasement, what will I be capable of when I no longer have to cram all of my\nwriting projects into tight spaces? How much high-quality work will I be able\nto produce if I no longer have to spend hours<\/em>\nevery day schlepping<\/em>\u2014to the library,\nto the gym, to the store? In short, I\u2019m excited to see what I\u2019ll be able to accomplish\nwhen there are no longer these limits of time and space on my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, just having a spacious office where all<\/em> of my books-in progress are always accessible is going to make me inestimably more productive. Currently I have nine books in progress: the Big Book, which is actually the word-length equivalent of 5 long novels; a journal about writing the Big Book; a Biblical novella; a new Dakota novel (that will likely be a big two-part novel); and a nascent franchise\u2014a \u201cmale romance\u201d thriller series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon I\nwill have the ultimate workspace for my writing\u2014a workspace that I\u2019ve only ever\ndreamed of. For decades I told myself that I didn\u2019t need such a space or that I\ndidn\u2019t want it, piously declaring that to a true writer where <\/em>he writes is immaterial, and that if my working conditions\nwere too comfortable, too pristine, I might not get any work done. I told\nmyself that I needed<\/em> the chaos from\nneighbors, leaf-blowers, raucous music and lack of space\u2014that these things gave\nme the creative tension<\/em> that fueled\nmy writing. I told myself that I didn\u2019t\nwant<\/em> a window with a nice view because it would distract me and I wouldn\u2019t\nget any work done. I told myself I didn\u2019t\nwant<\/em> a large writing space because it was unnecessary; I only wrote one\nbook at a time, one sentence at a time. I told myself that I didn\u2019t mind<\/em> having my manuscripts and\nmaterials crammed into boxes and cubby-holes. I told myself I didn\u2019t need<\/em> a quiet spot for just\nreading and writing. I told myself that, compared to people living in developing\nnations, I was living like a king, so I had no right to complain or to want my\nworking conditions to be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\nknow what? To hell with all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the\nend of 2019, when I anticipate having my office and library fully set up,\norganized and decorated, Chris Orcutt, novelist, will be back and better than\never.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Better\u2026stronger\u2026faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again:\nIf I can produce the equivalent of 20 books in a decade, writing and revising\nmillions of words while working largely out of a knapsack in a college library\nbasement, what will I be capable of with the ideal office space and increased\ntime?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have\na feeling I\u2019m going to be dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n Epilogue: It\u2019s Saturday, January 4, 2020. Alexas and I moved in on December 16. After spending over a month non-stop planning, packing, unpacking and setting up, as of today we are 100% finished. We cleaned up and partially finished the entire basement, installed an air purifier and black rubber tile flooring, and set up our old HD TV and sound system down there so we can have a workout room with \u201ccardio cinema.\u201d The kitchen is set up exactly to my liking, with new little conveniences that I\u2019ve always wanted, and all of my coffee-making accoutrements on one counter. All of our books (well over 2,000) are unpacked and shelved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for my office, it is\u2014for me\u2014utterly perfect. I still need to hang more artwork on the walls, but Alexas made setting up my office her first priority, so I have my reading\/editing area with a comfortable armchair and a great LED task light, right beside my very own Keurig coffee maker (writer: \u201ca machine that converts caffeine into words\u201d). On the other side of the room, I have my long-desired study carrel for doing focused writing, a cabinet to hold all my works in progress, and a big, sleek, uncluttered desk for doing computer work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve never been much for gadgets (especially for their own sake), but I now have a Google Home Mini on one side of my desk and a Bose speaker with Amazon\u2019s Alexa on the other side. I\u2019ve had the Bose with Alexa for almost two years. Notwithstanding the humorous hijinks that ensue when your voice assistant is named Alexa and your wife is named Alexas (I ask Alexas<\/em> where something is, and Alexa replies, \u201cSorry, I don\u2019t know how to do that\u201d; I ask Alexa<\/em> to play blizzard sounds at bedtime and a dozing, panic-stricken Alexas beside me replies, \u201cBlizzard? There\u2019s a blizzard outside?!\u201d), given that I purposely don\u2019t have internet access during the work day (too distracting) both of these tools have proven very useful when it comes to getting answers to niggling research questions while I\u2019m writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, I want to note that my new office was designed by my brilliant, multitalented wife, who spent hours<\/em> on online floor planner programs to devise the perfect layout. She also organized my supply closet\u2014not only fitting my ridiculous quantity of office supplies into the space, but also making all of them accessible, and<\/em> giving me a standing workspace in the closet as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know\nit\u2019s a clich\u00e9 to say so, but I don\u2019t care: I am blessed. Right now I have no\nproblems in my life and I can focus entirely on my books. I have a lot of work\nto do. In the next ten years I want to put out at least another dozen books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is Chris Orcutt, signing off and getting back to writing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a novelist, sometimes a minuscule change in routine, place or living situation can produce a massive shift in perspective that opens the floodgates of creativity. Having moved over 40 times in my 49 years, I\u2019ve experienced this phenomenon often in my writing life. In June 2010, having been back in my high school town … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[407,30,17,7,270,13,14,233,15],"tags":[96,525,469,527,221,526,93,355,144,524],"class_list":["post-8384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alphasmart-neo","category-chris-orcutt-books","category-computersandsoftware","category-personal","category-workspace","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","category-writing-life","category-writingtools","tag-novelist","tag-novelists-office","tag-office","tag-writers-desk","tag-writers-life","tag-writers-workspace","tag-writing","tag-writing-life","tag-writing-tools","tag-writing-workspace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8384"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8756,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8384\/revisions\/8756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n