\u201c<\/i>The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change \u2013 and we all instinctively avoid it.” \u2013 E.B. White<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i>I am in Maine experiencing the first day of what I am calling the new normal. It is the new normal because the plan is for us to spend equal or more of our time this summer here in Maine and my husband will be enjoying his first summer of working from where we are in forty-five years.<\/p>\n
I have owned a home on Bailey Island since 1988 and I have been coming to the island since 1981. Bailey Island is the third in a string of three small islands connected by bridges accessed from Brunswick, Maine, U.S.A. Because you don\u2019t have to take a boat to the mainland, you do not feel completely away but you are still fifteen miles from anywhere like civilization (in the interest of full-disclosure there is a small general store here on the island and a handful of restaurants.)<\/p>\n
Our house doesn’t have a television. I can honestly say we have never missed it \u2013 although this may not have been true of the friends and relatives who have passed through over the years. We have relied on books, games, one another, and more books to entertain ourselves. This year because of my need to use the Internet we figured out how to connect to that and with it: Facebook, Twitter, and email.<\/p>\n
Our day began with what we plan on being a daily walk from our house to the bridge, a four mile round trip march. The plan this summer is for me to write, write, write and finish Francesca\u2019s Foundlings. <\/b>In so many ways this is the ideal spot to do that. There are few interruptions and time to plot and carry on conversations with people only I can see.<\/p>\n
I do have an outline for Francesca\u2019s Foundlings.<\/b> An outline that both my characters and I rebel against \u2013 perhaps it\u2019s because I spent the seventh grade rebelling against the nun, Sister Daniel Joseph, who taught me how to outline. Intensely frustrated, I complained about this to my fellow writer,\u00a0Mike Robertson<\/a>, when I saw him in April.\u00a0 \u201cJust write the scenes,\u201d he said. \u201cWorry about where they fit when they\u2019re all finished.\u201d\u00a0 It was as if a shadow lifted. This \u00a0was exactly the way I had written MacCullough\u2019s Women. <\/b>\u00a0I actually wrote chapter five of that book first.\u00a0 Some writers strictly adhere to an outline and some, like me, do not. I was back in the writing business.<\/p>\n Last week I read through all the chapters I have already written and I was delighted to discover I really liked the book. There are some new characters along with the ones you have already met in MacCullough\u2019s Women. <\/b>It is going to be a busy summer here on Bailey Island.<\/p>\n
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