Which means, if you’re trying to be a writer yourself, there are scant examples of how—and really? This is not a crowd you want to see pantless and typing. Therefore, when it comes to one another, we find it easier to fantasize about location instead. No one believes that using the same pens as Toni Morrison will make you Toni Morrison, but looking at the same view, breathing the same air? It’s better than nothing. Which is why we are the most famous for running away from home. You don’t have to be rich. You can apply to a writer’s colony or sublet your apartment for a week. You can stockpile vacation days, hire a sitter, and go. Anything for a change of scenery, anything for no distractions. Anything for the ideal conditions. We become increasingly particular about our conditions until part of us can’t help but think of all the work we’d get done if only we were buried alive.
* * *
I was twenty-four the first time I skipped town to write. I printed out driving directions in Don’t Die–point type and drove to my aunt and uncle’s cabin in New Hampshire. Summer was ending, the LIFE IS BETTER AT THE LAKE welcome mats were being rolled up on porches across New England. My aunt and uncle were nice enough to hold off on closing up their place so that I might live out my writing fantasy in seclusion. I would be the very picture of a writer. Or at least their very picture of a writer. Our little John Grisham over here …
When I arrived, a list of cabin instructions awaited me, pinned down by a box of fudge. There were emergency numbers, an explanation of screen doors detailed enough to be understood by future civilizations, and a canoe paragraph that I skipped entirely. I would not be living my life. I would be writing about it.
How did I spend the next six days? I napped at odd hours. I read on the porch but became so hyperconscious of reading on a porch, I moved inside. I tried not to flush the septic toilet. I watched television. I drank an entire bottle of dessert wine. I ate Ritz crackers by the sleeve, glancing incuriously at the nutritional information. I gave myself ultimatums. You are not allowed to pee until you finish this paragraph. You may not indulge in episodes of The Real World unless you write four two pages. When people stop writing poorly and start not writing at all. I watched cycle after cycle of America’s Next Top Model and decided that the contestant who solves the “Tyra Mail” clue is the perfect level of smart. Go to great heights? I bet we’re jumping out of an airplane, you guys! Any smarter than this and you become unhappy.
The morning of my last day, I took what passed for a manuscript down to the end of the dock. I stretched out my arms, ready to work. A duck waddled down the planks after me, stood beside me, and quacked. Oh look, I thought, nature. The duck promptly released a spray of duck diarrhea on my title page. Then it waited to be congratulated. I shooed it away, knocking the entire manuscript into the water in the process. The pages bobbed beneath the dock, white flags of surrender. I instantly accepted these events, maybe even saw them coming. Like when I transport dirty wineglasses from one room to the other, knowing that one will break en route. Or I’ll climb a ladder to change a lightbulb and think: This fixture is probably going to fall on my head if I unscrew it too much. And then I do. And then it does.
* * *
For years after that I stayed put in New York, writing during weekends and late nights, dividing my time between my kitchen and my living room. Until one day, when I got a call from my friend Margeaux, telling me she had moved to Russian River, California. I was unfamiliar with Russian River aside from having seen the words paired together on wine labels. I assumed it was just as bucolic as Napa and Sonoma, only less renowned. Like one of Gisele Bündchen’s sisters. But I did know Margeaux. She grew up in Berkeley, buying incense by the pound. She owned a dizzying number of sweatshirts with thumbholes in the cuffs and said “hella” a lot. She explained that her new place, perched in the redwoods, was “hella magical” for writing. Was I interested in house-sitting for a week? Reader, I was. Hella magical country houses do not grow on trees. Well, except for this one. Technically, this one did.
After Margeaux retrieved me from the airport, we stocked up on provisions. This included items such as squash, rice cakes, flax cereal, a jar of cashew butter, and a pride of avocados. Since chipmunks had gnawed through Margeaux’s bike tires and the closest market was twenty miles away, the bags of groceries that rattled in the back of her car would have to tide me over. The plan was for her to teach me how not to blow up the house, then head down to San Diego for a family wedding. She’d be back in time to drive me to the airport. My only chore was to water her plants with a garden hose. As someone who never gets to use a garden hose, I was thrilled.
We unpacked the food and stood on her porch, taking in the air, listening to her rather irritating wind chime.
“Is that a wind chime?” I asked.
Of course it was a wind chime. It sounded exactly like a wind chime sounds.
That thing would be coming down the second she left.
Tinging aside, Margeaux was right. Her house was a distraction-free zone. There was no television and the Internet only came through in one corner of the porch, where my laptop acknowledged the presence of a network called “KindBud420.”
“Friends of yours?” I
