In an attempt to be more productive I’ve been trying to devise a routine. And stick with it (that’s the difficulty). It’s harder now that I’ve embarked on a month-long tour of the west, with all of the distractions and novelty which journeys provide.
Because I am most comfortable with calling myself a writer, I’ve decided to start a proactive push to submit work. I realized I don’t do that any more. And because, in the course of my life, I’ve submitted short stories to a handful of publications, my brain (as brains do) has filled in the big blank spaces during which I never did anything of the sort, so that I think I’ve been actively engaging with the literary world as a writer much much more than I have. The current plan is to submit a short story every day. Well, more like six submissions a week. This seems a bit less extreme considering I have a novel in progress which is, essentially, forty interconnected short stories, and then there are the slew of flash fiction prose poetry things coming out of this Invocation project.
I am now closing out week six. From the simple math, I should have thirty-six submissions. But I have sent out into the world only twenty-eight. Still, impressive. To date I have seven responses. And to help me trudge forward in this questionable course of sending prose out to literary magazines and sites which, for the most part, pay nothing, I have received one acceptance (with six rejections). It has not yet appeared live on their journal’s site yet. I hope they don’t change their minds.
I’m traveling the month of June with Laurie. In fact, this trip came out of an invitation from a friend of hers who lives in Santa Rosa, California. Martha booked a cultural tour of Cuba and needed someone to look after her place and her cat, Andre, for her two weeks abroad. Not only did we agree, but we decided to extend our trip for two more weeks, to visit some of our friends and relatives (so many people end up on the west coast).
Camping whilst on the road appeals to me because I love sleeping under the stars and am somewhat, to put it kindly, frugal. Laurie, not so much in either category. Our compromise was to never camp two nights in a row.
Our trip out from San Antonio brought us, on night one, to a campsite I’ve enjoyed before in New Mexico. It’s just outside of the town of Carrizozo, on the edge of the Malpais lava field. It’s about halfway between the birthplace of Smokey Bear and the Trinity Site, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated.
We then took out across New Mexico, past the Very Large Array radio telescope, into Arizona, up onto and down the old Route 66, before stopping for the night in a well-preserved semi kitschy Hill Top Motel in Kingman, Arizona.
The next leg of our trip took us up into Nevada, towards Las Vegas. But first we made a detour at the Hoover Dam to check it out.
And then straight into the maw of Las Vegas (because neither of us have ever been). Even in the light of day, it’s, well, something else. We gawped with, I think, appropriate incredulity, and headed on our way. I had hoped we might pull into a parking lot of some iconic casino, such as Caesers Palace or the Tropicana (sadly, I believe the historic Pair-O-Dice Club was shuttered decades ago), and scurry into the appalling opulence just long enough to lose forty dollars in a couple of slot machines and dash right back out. However, the place just isn’t set up for some casual pop-in, like a visit to your neighborhood drug store. Fine, actually. Just a drive down the strip was all either of us wanted.
Our escape route took us into the heart of Nevada, a land whose beauty is, for the most, unsullied by humanity. Things got a bit kooky on Nevada State Route 375. It’s colloquially referred to on the road signs as the Extraterrestrial Highway (presumably because of it’s proximity to the notorious Area 51). It’s loose livestock country (meaning grazing cows are not kept by fences from blundering into the road), and the warning signs–iconic cow silhouettes–have been embellished with pictures of flying saucers and space aliens.
That night we camped at a fairly isolated park, Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. The park, in the foothills of the Shoshone Mountains, surrounds an abandoned mining town. For a place seemingly so far off the main tourist paths, the camp site was over half-filled. It’s a beautiful and picturesque place.
The following day took us over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, cresting at infamous Donner Pass, and into California. In early June there was still some snow on the ground. This final leg was the shortest drive. After Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, it seemed unexpected to cross an entire state so quickly. Ah, skinny California.
We’ve been in a very unremarkable suburban development for the past week. Well, there are mountains everywhere you look. Peaceful, unscripted days. Day trips, writing, reading, even a Skype session with our writing group. And we have another week here in Sonoma Valley, before we head up into Oregon, and on to the next series of adventures.