My Last Pictures from Doe Branch Ink (for this year)

Last week was a mini-bonus life in a house full of writers with good food and good views: the writing workshop at Doe Branch Ink in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains:

To give full credit, the shot above of the group from the third floor landing was taken by novelist/site manager Nick Roberts.

The ones below are part of my record of the week, and my parting exploration of the neighborhood: the wide French Broad River, the 800 person nearby county seat of Marshall and its quirkily rich Lapland bookstore, plus the blazing fall color and blue sky.

Bold Bonus Life Tip #8: Make a record: a journal or photos or blog posts or saved emails or podcasts or some combination. That way you'll have your extra tucked-in life in fuller detail. Otherwise a lot of memory will simply slide away like the fast French Broad.

And you never know what use you might find for such a record. I got my novel Sister India out of my bonus life in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.

BTW, I do plan to lead a group again next fall at Doe Branch Ink. Let me know if you'd like to join us. If you can't wait that long, the admirable Craig Nova will kick off the 2011 spring-summer season in May.

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My Bonus Life at Doe Branch Ink: 2

Next to the last full day of the writers' retreat at Doe Branch Ink in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I've fallen into the peaceful and richly interesting routine of this extra tucked-in life.

We are six writers on these 50 acres with three rustic houses and lots of desks with views. We're all getting work done. I know because the daily reading of revisions is at four p.m.
One of our number has set up shop in the little bunkhouse where no one is sleeping this week. There's enough room for everyone to have a bedroom and a work spot elsewhere. Note Cat writing in her corner of the second floor sunroom.


This is the first time I've ever led/facilitated a group that it hasn't felt for a moment like work. It has been fun and interesting many times before; still I've always felt that I was "on" at least part of the time.

Please note: this is a bold step for me, this not-being-on. I really like it.

Also, I've plunged back into work on my own novel in progress, which I've been avoiding since I got back from New York. I'm happy with what I've gotten done, and I've liked doing it. See view from my writing table.

To top it all off -- and who would have predicted this -- I've come to a slightly different and very exciting religious understanding since I've been here. Credit that to Mahan, who left just the right book on the coffee table and then talked with me about it later.
What changed for me was not so much new experience or new information, but seeing how my own beliefs fit together and fall into a long tradition. Makes me feel less out on a limb. Though I've always claimed to like being out on a limb, it's nice to be able to scamper back up to a central trunk.

And did I say that the food is excellent? Last night's pasta and pesto (catered by Zuma in the wee metropolis of Marshall) dazzled us all. I should have taken a picture.

Bold Bonus Life Tip # 7: Expect unexpected outcomes.




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One-Week Bonus Life at Doe Branch Ink

This is the kind of extra life that is like a surprise package. I agreed to run a writing group at a house deep in the North Carolina mountains. Miles from a paved road. I showed up.


And now I'm three days into an eight-day experience far from my regular world. It will be a chunk of time with distinct edges that allows me to operate a little differently than I might otherwise.

Doe Branch Ink is a brand-new writers' retreat center not too far from Hot Springs in the Blue Ridge. The main house holds all of us this time. Meals are catered. There's a stream ten minutes down the steep mountainside that joins with another stream and runs into the French Broad River. After lunch today, one of the other writers and I took an hour-plus hike downstream to a series of waterfalls with a 30 foot drop. It was a sturdy climb coming back to the house.

We all have been writing on and off all day, and then had a reading and critiquing session in the living room at four. Food report: Dinner was pork loin with apples, cheese grits, salad, and a dessert of walnut brownies with vanilla ice cream. And wine.

The company is excellent. The writers are extremely varied in style and interest, and all experienced at giving useful feedback, an interestingly convivial group: a woman who grew up French who's writing a memoir (and who was very curious about the naming of the nearby French Broad River), an academic/former reporter with a rather startling nonfiction interest, a business owner writing women's fiction, a well-known retired liberal minister who is writing articles. And the on-site manager is also a novelist.

The house has writing stations on the porch, the deck, the sunroom, the loft, the bunkhouse near the main house. Lots of good views. And people have been productive. Most of them more so than I have been.

But I have started a new chapter on a novel I'm working on. Haven't proceeded far into it, but I needed to get it underway.

Bold Bonus Life Tip #6: A radical shift of place and routine, even brief, can get stuck projects get moving. Especially when one is surrounded by like-minded supportive folks.



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Busy, Busy

I'm working so hard this week getting ready to go away for a week to a Doe Branch Ink writers' retreat that I haven't had time post.

Bold Bonus Life Tip #5: Building in extra lives, even only week long, takes a lot of tying up of loose ends in advance.

Back to you soon -- from the North Carolina mountains.





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A Bonus Life of Song?

It takes a bit of chutzpah to keep a sense of humor in some professions.

Take anesthesiology, for one example. Unless you're one of the 5.3 million people who have already heard this, then you must click and listen, for the smile value.



These guys demonstrate Bonus Life Tip #4: one can have an extra life even while the main one is still going on.

Another example: I talked with a successful lawyer this past week who's also in three -- or was it four? -- bands. Probably makes him much better at his work.


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