Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.”

Today, please welcome writer

KAREN NELSON

The framed photo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spotlighted on the log wall of the Owl Bar feels very apropos. I am sipping wine at a table with two women, Lesley and Cindy, who have been my writing accomplices for the better part of twenty years.

We have shared works-in-progress, final drafts, successes, failures, reading lists, hotel rooms, meals, hikes, recipes, gossip, and countless hours supporting each other as writing group members in what would otherwise be a solitary pursuit. We live in three different time zones so to be sitting together at one table is a rare treat.

Today is the final full day of Writing By Writers Manuscript Boot Camp. A workshop for writers who want to have their full books critiqued. I wear the hats of co-founder, fixer, and literary cat herder. One of the perks of the job(s) is spending time with fellow writers in inspirational settings, such as the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah.

Unlike my normal day, I have woken up without my early-rising Labrador retriever jabbing his wet nose in my face to demand breakfast. Savoring the warmth of my fluffy bed, I completed my 1,945th consecutive day of Duolingo (yet my French is still très mal) and begin building words on The New York Times Spelling Bee. This is a new morning ritual. One acquired in an attempt to hold on to my age-diminishing vocabulary. I am two words away from Queen Bee when Lesley knocks on the door to see if I am ready for breakfast.

I am not a breakfast eater, but at the workshops, it’s my favorite meal. The pressure to have intelligent conversation is low, but there is an undertone of creative energy. This morning’s chatter is about summarizing your book in one sentence, tricks for getting back into a novel you hoped was done, the pros and cons of dog self-feeders, and if daylight savings time should be abolished.

Creativity sparked, I retreat to my room while the participants head to workshop. The fireplace roars to life with the flick of a switch, and I open my laptop. I have spent the last four years reworking two novels that I excavated from the proverbial drawer.

The first, The Sunken Town, will be published December 6th. The second, The Last Summer At Feather River, is queued up for the following summer. Both books are coming out with Sibylline, a press that publishes the work of “brilliant women over the age of fifty.” These are their words, not mine, and I find every excuse I can to say them.

But now it’s time to dig back into the manuscript I set aside when I stalled out around 25,000 words—overwhelmed by the gulf of fiction in front of me. In my head is a brilliant novel with multiple points of view, including the first-person plural. Yet I fear I am not a good enough writer to get that story onto the page.

At my writing retreat last month, to reground myself in the book, I sorted through my scraps of notes collected in various locations, then read through what I had written. By the end of the weekend, I had narrowed the scope of the novel to a six-month timeframe that felt surmountable.

During yesterday’s faculty panel, Antonya Nelson shared that she likes to set the ticking clock of the story. I realized that was exactly what I had done. Now I just needed to start writing. I much prefer rewriting to writing. The obvious problem being, I can’t rewrite if I don’t write.

The people in the room above me sound like they are harboring a heard of elephants that might soon come through the ceiling. I block this out and start from page one. My writing time passes both quickly and painfully slowly. Much tea is consumed. Soon it is time for the faculty panel on the power of literary friendships.

After lunch Cindy and I take a hike up the mountain. This is our usual pattern. Write in the morning, then walk in the afternoon and dissect how the writing went. Not only is she the Butch to my Sundance, but she is a fixture at our writing workshops and my frequent writing retreat partner.

We get to chatting about my book launch event. Cindy is going to be interviewing me, and she asks me to recount my process of writing the novel. The Sunken Town has two storylines, Lindsay’s and Claire’s. Lindsay is a thirty-year-old who never gave much thought to the fact she was adopted until she unexpectedly inherits her birth mother, Claire’s, farmhouse in Maine.

Originally, I had written an entire novel solely about Lindsay that I had set aside with no plans to pick back up. Until Richard Bausch gave me a writing prompt.

Cindy was my roommate at our Writing By Writer’s workshop where Claire’s story began. She was also with me when I realized I might be writing a layer of Lindsay’s story. Cindy remembers me saying, “I think this is going to work” as I attempted to mesh the two storylines together into one book. We laugh that we should have been the ones on the panel about literary friendships that morning.

Over wine at the Owl Bar, Lesley shares that her workshop went well and her class told her it was time to write a query letter. I have long-believed her book should be out in the world, and I’m thrilled her class agreed. We toast.

At the start of each Writing By Writers workshop, we say that our hope is for people to come away with a trusted reader or two. Under the watch of Butch and Sundance, I realize there’s no one I’d rather run with into the writing life’s hail of bullets, guns blazing, than these two women.

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NOT THOSE SAME 3 QUESTIONS…

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1. What one word best describes your reading life?

• Constant.

2. When you’re writing, is there something you return to again and again for inspiration?

• The landscape.

3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?

• Mahjong.

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By KAREN NELSON

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—Other Writers in the Series—