And while deep in the Sisyphean midst of this overwhelming mountain of work, macabrely my thoughts have turned to a comment I\u2019ve heard many times\u2014a comment that forms the title of this blog entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While I\u2019ve been writing professionally for 30 years (in 1992, I got my first writing job straight out of college as a reporter for this now-defunct newspaper<\/a>), this year marks the 20th<\/sup> year that I\u2019ve been writing fiction full-time. Two decades of waking up every day and writing stories, creating characters and worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the course of the past 20 years, upon learning what I do, many people have commented to me, \u201cMan\u2026you\u2019re livin\u2019 the dream!\u201d The most memorable time, the comment was made by a staff writer for the HBO series Hung<\/em>. We both had entries in a play festival and were explaining our backgrounds to each other. Very quickly I figured out that this guy was overworked, unfulfilled and stressed-out from having to crank out episodes of a TV show. Then, when I told him that I wrote exclusively my own fiction and (at the time) did speechwriting work occasionally to supplement my income, his face lightened and he appeared to be visualizing \u201cthe dream\u201d for himself. When he came back to reality, there was a little envious twitch in his brow, and then he said, \u201cMan, that\u2019s great. Good for you. I\u2019m glad one of us is livin\u2019 the dream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know what? I really am<\/em> living the dream\u2014but it\u2019s my<\/em> dream. I\u2019ve known since I was 13 years old that this was what I wanted to do with my life\u2014write fiction, be a novelist\u2014and I get to do this work every day, and I\u2019m profoundly grateful for it. But when non-writers (or unfulfilled screenwriters, journalists, content writers, ad men, etc.) have made that comment, they\u2019ve typically focused only on the pleasant aspects of my work and they either haven\u2019t understood, or they\u2019ve downplayed, the negatives\u2014chiefly, how much time and labor the work requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What they don\u2019t see or don\u2019t visualize as a part of \u201cthe dream\u201d are the endless 12-hour days required to finish a novel. They also don\u2019t see the fact that novel-writing is an absolute time-sink (the other day, I glanced at the clock and it was noon; I wrote three paragraphs, looked up at the clock and it was three o\u2019clock; goodbye to another gorgeous Saturday afternoon).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because novel-writing is a solitary activity where the writer spends a good 80% of his time alone, he doesn\u2019t have a lot of people (if anybody) with whom he can share his work or simply make a connection. And in order to create living, breathing characters, the novelist must live not only his own personal emotional life with all its ups and downs, but also the emotional lives of all of his characters, and he also must put everything that is in him into the work. In my case, on a daily basis I\u2019m besieged by doubts and guilt and an overwhelming sense of emotional angst (or tinnitus), usually not about things that I, Chris Orcutt, have contemplated or done, but because of things that my characters have contemplated, done, and possibly felt guilty about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This can lead to times when my emotional reserves (or \u201cthe well\u201d) are absolutely depleted\u2014something that has happened to me at least ten times over the past 20 years, and it happened to me again recently, during lunch with my best friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing that I was distraught (I was considering drinking for the first time in 3\u00bd years), he kindly suggested a dozen things he could do to help me. I truly appreciated his kindness, but I knew what I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I needed a break. I needed a vacation. I needed to roam and explore and get the hell away from my cast of 20+ self-absorbed teenage characters. I needed to refill the well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that\u2019s exactly what I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve discovered that, for me, these breakdowns occur when there\u2019s an imbalance between output and input. I have an emotional breakdown when I\u2019ve had nothing but output<\/em> for a long time, and my well of images, feelings, and inspiration has drained down to dregs. When this happens, I have to get input<\/em> back into the system: I have to see new and different people and places, stop writing for output for a while (instead just take casual, random notes, a form of input), and simply enjoy myself. In short, I have to go have adventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve written extensively elsewhere about some of my past modest adventures: in Paris and Normandy, on a two-week driving tour of Great Britain, in the wilds of Montana, etc. This time around, my well-refilling adventure was much more spontaneous, and broken into three parts: a week on Florida beaches and at Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom, a week\u2019s \u201cstaycation\u201d of seeing friends and going to movies, and a few days in my new wilderness getaway location\u2014Adirondack Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love to swim, so my wife booked us into a resort hotel in Fort Lauderdale, and I did nothing but work out, run on the beach, and swim in the ocean and the amazing resort pool. Something about the pleasant monotony of the ocean waves clears my head, and after an angry and disturbed 24 hours of not knowing what to do with myself, I became \u201cvacation Chris\u201d\u2014a guy who makes friends with the locals and fellow vacationers. I conversed in Spanish with the pool maintenance guy, Jorge, before the sun had come up. I perfected making egg white vegetable omelets in our hotel room kitchenette. I threw a football around in the surf with a group of Austrian exchange students and explained the rules of American football. I read a couple pages (and only a couple) of a nonfiction book I\u2019ve been savoring: Max Perkins, Editor of Genius<\/em>. In no time\u2014perhaps because the well had already begun to refill\u2014random ideas for my novel-in-progress started coming to me, and I wrote them in a \u201c007\u201d Moleskine notebook I\u2019d brought. And I also got a pretty sweet tan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a drive across the state through the Everglades (disappointing; we didn\u2019t see a single alligator), my wife and I went to famed Clearwater Beach on the Gulf Coast. There, I played bocce with a group of 20-something American guys and swam a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, the next day, we went to Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom, and I wore my safari jacket and a new hat I\u2019d picked up in Florida. Consequently, my safari outfit was better than that worn by the park employees, and I was asked for directions (and complimented by staff about my outfit) at least a dozen times during the day. For the course of the day, in my mind I pretended to be a young version of a character I created in my story \u201cThe Last Great White Hunter\u201d\u2014Buck Remington. \u201cWhat kind of a man was he? More than a man\u2019s man, that\u2019s for sure. He was a man\u2019s man\u2019s man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a guy who never got to experience any of the Disney parks as a kid, I was thoroughly blown away by my visit\u2014most notably how the park operated like a Swiss watch: with total precision. I had gone into the experience girding my loins, expecting to have to wait for hours for certain rides and attractions, but I discovered that the rides are designed so that standing in line is part of the experience, and so the half-hour that we had to wait was never a hardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was waiting in line for my second ride on the Mt. Everest \u201cthrill ride,\u201d I perused photos on the wall of a 1982 expedition to Forbidden Mountain in the Himalayas to seek out the Yeti. Now, as someone who has read a couple dozen books about Bigfoot and the Yeti (or Abominable Snowman), I was intrigued; I\u2019d never heard of this 1982 expedition, and some of the photos recovered from an expedition camera seemed to show a Yeti. As the line to get on the ride moved forward, I had to stop reading the display, but later on looked it up and learned it was 100% fictitious\u2014created entirely by the Disney imagineers. Wow. These men and women are good<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I loved everything about Animal Kingdom, and when we got back from this vacation, I immediately bought 50 more shares of Disney stock. While there, I realized something: Nobody does it like Disney, and whatever they do in the future, I want to make sure I have a piece of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we got home again, I took some more time off, getting together with friends, swimming, working out, and going to the movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since I\u2019m working on a novel that takes place in 1986-87, the original Top Gun<\/em> makes an appearance in the novel, so ever since I found out about the sequel, I\u2019ve been looking forward to the movie. Honestly, though, I thought the producers would screw it up, making some watered-down, politically correct movie, but they didn\u2019t. Clearly, they used the original movie as a template, creating one of the best movies I\u2019ve seen in years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What most pleased me about Top Gun: Maverick<\/em> was that, unlike superhero movies made today, it wasn\u2019t made for the new generation; it was made for my<\/em> generation\u2014those of us who saw the original movie in the theater half a dozen times during the summer of \u201986. The makers of Maverick<\/em> used the same story structure, and simply augmented and refined the original movie \u201cthrill ride\u201d with modern special effects, a videogame component, and a character (a few years older than me) who is now at the end of his career. All I can say is, my first words to my wife (during the movie) were, \u201cI want the Blu-Ray of this movie for Christmas.\u201d (A week after seeing Maverick<\/em> in the theater the first time, I went back and saw it a second time\u2014it\u2019s that good.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n My most recent adventure in refilling the well was even more spontaneous than the Florida trip. For months, I\u2019d been casting about for ideas on where to go in order to refill the well, and then I realized that a few important scenes in my epic novel take place in the Adirondacks in New York State, and in Burlington on Lake Champlain in Vermont. Back in my teens and early 20s, I spent a lot of time up there with Boy Scouts and visiting a friend\u2019s house on one of the lakes, but with the exception of visiting Lake Placid every couple of years for XC-skiing, I hadn\u2019t really explored up there in nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for four days I wended my way around Adirondack Park, visiting about a dozen lakes (hey, California: by the way, New York has all <\/em>the water), hamlets surrounded by mountains, and locations that appear in the novel. I used the trip in part to relax, and in part to remind myself of several facts about these areas for the novel. Among the many things I was reminded of, following are a few truths I relearned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. The water in these lakes is extremely cold, even in mid-June. (In my late teens and early 20\u2019s, I did a lot of waterskiing with a friend whose family had a house on one of the lakes up there, but I\u2019d forgotten since then just how cold the waters are.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. The deer flies and blackflies are super<\/em>-friendly up there, gathering excitedly around your car to greet you before you\u2019ve even had a chance to park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Adirondack Park is VAST<\/em>\u2014nothing but 6-million acres of mountains, lakes, rivers, bogs, ravines and true, dense, primordial wilderness. When seen in satellite view, the few roads and communities contained within the confines of the park look like gossamer-thin spider webs compared to the overwhelming green of the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While up there, I swam in several lakes, visited a couple of the \u201cgreat camps\u201d (family \u201cgetaway\u201d lodges once owned by prominent industrialists like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and Durant), and in general simply began \u201cdreamsketching\u201d (my term) the outline for the last episode of the novel. The climax of the final episode and million-word series takes place in the Adirondacks, so I want it to be riveting and accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Driving around an area puts me into something of a meditative trance, allowing \u201cdreamsketching\u201d of the novel to happen spontaneously. (I have engaged in this activity for every novel I\u2019ve written\u2014most notably during a two-week driving and hiking tour of Montana and Yellowstone National Park that formed the basis for the second half of my Dakota mystery The Rich Are Different<\/em>.) In this case, I drove hundreds of miles through Adirondack Park while listening to music that conjures scenes from the novel, and as the music washed over me, and these amazing images of the wilderness up there washed over me (steep and towering mountainsides; deep, shadowy ravines; rushing rivers; deep blue lakes; and impenetrable, dense, dark woods), the scenes played out for me in my mind, and I would pull the car over occasionally and make notes in the \u201c007\u201d Moleskine notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a sidebar, I have to mention that I had the best breakfast of my life at a charming little diner in Blue Mountain Lake, NY: Chef Darryl’s Mountain Diner<\/a>. This place is truly a culinary oasis in a vast and forbidding wilderness (Adirondack Park). Chef Darryl himself greeted me when I walked in, and he made my scrambled eggs exactly how I like them\u2014\u201cfluffy.\u201d My breakfast there was SO good that I went back a few hours later and bought lunch to go. I also bought a Chef Darryl’s Mountain Diner \u201cregular\u2019s\u201d mug and wrote my name on the bottom (\u201cChris Orcutt, Novelist\u201d), so the next time I go back, I\u2019ll only have to pay $1.00 for my coffee\u2014with unlimited refills. Thanks, Darryl! The food there was so good, the next day when I wanted breakfast, even though the diner was 40-some-odd miles away, I seriously considered backtracking an hour for Darryl\u2019s magnificent cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not going to write about finding the train depot in the Adirondacks where Theodore Roosevelt learned he had become president after William McKinley\u2019s assassination; nor about my adventure hiking around Sagamore Lake and borrowing somebody\u2019s canoe; nor about my fly fishing adventure on the west branch of the Ausable River; nor about my afternoon hanging out with the attractive male and female lifeguards on Lake Champlain (a group of teens and 20-somethings whom I dubbed Baywatch: Burlington North Beach<\/em>); nor about my quest to find the location of a 1976 bigfoot sighting outside of Whitehall, NY. I\u2019m sorry, but those are just for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, though, as I head into the homestretch with my behemoth epic novel, I\u2019m determined to pace myself with this final episode. I realize that I need to take regular breaks to refill the well, so I don\u2019t have the kind of breakdown I had this spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This August I will take a couple days to \u201cdo\u201d Saratoga\u2014hanging out with the trainers and handicappers by the fence rails watching the early-morning workouts, betting on the races during the day, and swimming and working out and playing billiards in the evenings. This fall I will take another trip to the Adirondacks, and said trip will include some more fly fishing. Early this winter (probably in December), I\u2019m traveling alone to Lake Placid, NY and getting extensive lessons in skating style cross-country skiing from a professional at the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic training facility. And next March, Alexas and I will return to Florida for at least a week of sun and beaches, and to visit Disney\u2019s Epcot or Hollywood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yup\u2026I suppose that writer for Hung<\/em> was right: I am<\/em> livin\u2019 the dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now I realize that livin<\/em>\u2019 the d<\/em>ream<\/em> encompasses more than the endless work of trying to create novels that will stand the test of time; livin\u2019 the dream also means roaming and exploring and refilling the creative well\u2014without having to answer to anybody<\/em> along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These breaks are an integral part of the dream, and from now on I\u2019m going to make sure I take them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple weeks ago, I finished the second draft of the third episode (or volume) of the epic-length novel I\u2019ve been writing for seven years. I\u2019m now headed into the homestretch with this draft, since the next episode will be the last one in the series. What this means is, I hope to be finished … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[619,3,618,77,7,76,177,68,11,12,32,292,233],"tags":[624,625,609,626,616,474,622,222,221,93,355,621,620],"class_list":["post-8839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adirondack-park","category-craft","category-florida","category-novels","category-personal","category-process","category-research","category-rewriting","category-dakota-stevens-mysteries-series","category-the-rich-are-different","category-travel","category-vermont","category-writing-life","tag-adirondack-park","tag-adirondacks","tag-epic-novel","tag-great-camps","tag-magnum-opus","tag-new-york","tag-road-trip","tag-vermont","tag-writers-life","tag-writing","tag-writing-life","tag-writing-research","tag-writing-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839","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=8839"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8901,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839\/revisions\/8901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/IMG_20210903_203954718_resize_9-1024x768.jpg\")
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