The Innkeeper's Husband

How Room 6 Got a Flatscreen TV

2011-01-31T08:44:00.000-05:00

Some of our rooms have televisions in them; some of them don’t. How this happened is a long, organic tale.

In days of yore (November, 2000) when we became innkeepers, television was a topic that we didn’t want to talk about. The rooms at the Auberge came equipped with small black & white portable televisions that pulled in the analog signal beamed from the top of Mt. Mansfield. When we learned the cost of wiring the inn for cable television, we decided not to upgrade. Instead we decided position ourselves as a non-television oriented inn. Our focus would be on service, hospitality, and simplicity. Our low rates would reflect that. In a town where the race toward luxury was in full swing, we comfortably settled into the spot that would become our logline: “Stowe’s most affordable B&B.”

That didn’t mean that we would turn our backs on television; we just wouldn’t make it a cornerstone of our business model. People could watch all the television they wanted at home, we reasoned. In Stowe, the attractions were outside the door. There was a television in the common room, and when a fellow innkeeper sold some televisions to us, we added them to the downstairs rooms. These were nice color sets, but the big attraction for us was that they had built-in VHS players. Guests could borrow tapes from our modest VHS library and watch a movie if they wished.

This left the two upstairs rooms without televisions at all. Even though those rooms were more expensive than the downstairs rooms, nobody seemed to mind the lack of an idiot box. When digital television arrived, we bought some converters for the downstairs sets, but still we didn’t add television to the two upstairs rooms without them. At this point, ten years into our innkeeping lives, the decision was driven more by apathy than anything else.

This December, a couple stayed with us, and they were disappointed that there wasn’t a television in their room, one of the upstairs queen rooms. It’s happened before; usually we’re able to mollify them with a shrug and an explanation of our innkeeping philosophy. But that week the hot tub--which has been in the infirmary several times already this winter--conked out. Our guests were crushed; the outdoor hot tub was one of the reasons they stayed with us. No TV, no hot tub...what good were we?

That Saturday, after returning from shopping, Chantal plunked down a box on the dining room table. “It’s a TV,” she said. “A digital, flat-screen TV.” She’d bought it at one of the discount stores on sale. That afternoon I installed it in Room 6, in hopes that the couple staying there would at least accept the TV as a gesture on our part to make their stay a positive one. They never mentioned the television that bloomed from the wall in their bedroom that day, and we didn’t ask. And though we’re still not planning to wire the inn with satellite or cable and outfit the rooms with HD flatscreens, we’re one set closer to having every room equipped with a television.

Genre & Technique

2011-01-13T06:22:00.004-05:00

Here are links to some of the class resources:

The Hero's Journey Outline.

Heroic Archetypes.

Practical Guide to the Hero with a Thousand Faces.

George Lucas talks to Bill Moyers about The Hero's Journey, Star Wars, and Joseph Campbell.

Bill Moyers talks with Joseph Campbell about The Hero's Journey.

Intested Applicants Apply Within

2009-11-11T15:34:00.002-05:00

Wanted:

Lover of good books; interested in publishing industry. Must be a wealthy individual, preferably in mid-fifties, divorced once and unhappy or bored in second marriage. Looking for a way to indulge a long dormant passion, namely writing, as a benefactor. Must be looking for a place to lose some money in exchange for name on imprint. Dependence on whiskey a plus. Opportunity to meet hot literary chicks. Interested parties should reply to thewritersway@gmail.com.

The Publishing Game

2009-09-12T09:09:00.002-04:00

I was telling a friend some time ago about The Innkeeper's Husband, and he said, "Bad time to try and publish a book. Economy has ruined the publishing biz. All is lost." Or something like that. Anyway, the message was that the poor economy was not conducive to trying to land a book publishing deal. That doesn't mean that I can't try, or that I won't succeed.

The Innkeeper's Husband is a genre-defying memoir, and I think it will have a broad audience. It's selling on Kindle, and I'm currently pursuing a deal with White River Press, whose titles I've admired, especially The Lamoille Stories, by Bill Schubart. If you'd like to see the book in print, then let White River Press know by emailing them!

In the meantime, I'm still looking at other publishers if White River doesn't work out.

2009-06-14T14:24:00.004-04:00

Visit Amazon's Kindle site and check out my book, The Innkeeper's Husband.

I just logged onto this blog and discovered that I haven't been here since February. Can that be true? I guess that's a sign that there was very little activity surrounding the publishing of The Innkeeper's Husband. All that's changed.

The Innkeeper's Husband is now available exclusively on Amazon as a download for their Kindle reader. It retails for $6.99.

I know this is an odd way to approach publishing, but I'm of a mind to go at things a little differently. I'm not sure how this will play out, or if it will lead to a traditional publishing deal. The way I'm looking at it, any publishing opportunity is a good opportunity.

So if you have a Kindle, go download The Innkeeper's Husband. Enjoy!

Writing, Waiting, Maddening

2009-02-04T17:40:00.002-05:00

You write. It's what you do. If you're smart, you don't talk to much about it. Blatherskites sap energy. But you, you're a writer, dammit. You're going to buckle down, churn out another thousand words, another short story, another novel by the end of the year, whenever your year ends. If you're lucky. If the phone doesn't ring. If you don't have to go to work. If your S.O. doesn't leave you. If the stars line up. If you can figure how to get your main character moving again, dodging bullets, suffering cuckoldry, or the slings and arrows of some other outrageous fortune. Through it all, you write.

Or so I tell myself. As I find myself in the middle of writing a new novel, I try to tell myself all these things, to cast myself as Clint Eastwood's character in all those spaghetti westerns, steely glint in my eye, putrid cheroot making the rounds of my parched lips.

But my pleasant fantasies are always interrupted by realities and imperatives that transcend my precious imagination. There's a new semester to lure me away from my writing, new students to shepherd and inspire, new reading to slog my way through. There's my family and their needs, my sons in middle school, needing dad, asking questions. There's the inn, the duties there, the frozen pipes, the dirty floors, the constant tinkering with an old house. There's my beautiful wife, who needs me so much, just to be there, not imploding, not losing my mind, not drifting through my fiction. There's skiing, skiing, skiing.

All of this is to say that the new novel--which isn't a novel at all, but three novellas--is moving along, if only at a snail's pace. And while I write, I wait, I wait to hear from Quintessential Press, where The Innkeeper's Husband is spending its days in consideration. It's maddening, it's all so maddening.

Publish, Perish, or Self-Publish

2008-12-31T14:57:00.004-05:00

I remember, back in the olden days, when the thought of self-publication was a smear against the quality of a writer's work. Vanity publishers were seen as predators, swooping in on misguided, deep-pocketed wordsmith-wannabees. The prevailing wisdom went like this: if your book deserved to be published, there were people sitting in cubicles in New York City high rises that were bred to decide that. And then the Internet came along.

The term "vanity press" has been replaced with "print-on-demand," and the ease of availability of merchandise online--including books--has made it almost impossible for the consumer to distinguish between traditional and--what shall we call this new approach to publishing? Progressive?--methods of publication. The primary argument against businesses such as Infinity and Lulu is that without trained pros separating the literary wheat from the chaff, who's to know what's good and what's not? The answer to that is, of course, the people. It's hard to hide online, and if you're successful in publishing your volume of crap, and you manage to sell a bunch of copies by duping people, you won't last long. Of course, the obverse is true, too: it's easy to hide online, to morph your image, to continue peddling sub-par writing.

The annals of publishing are filled with stories of boneheaded "pros" who failed to recognize a good thing--either commercially or literally--when they saw it. John Grisham's A Time To Kill was rejected by scores of publishers. Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earned 122 rejection slips before finding a home. And it's worth being reminded that Ernest Hemingway privately published his first volume, called Three Stories and Ten Poems.

What does this have to do with The Innkeeper's Husband? Sure I've thought about self-publishing it. But I believe it can withstand the scrutiny of the publishing world, I think it has the chops, so I'll keep sending it out. This got back into my consciousness recently when a book I worked on as a content editor made it to press. Called Beautiful Brown Eyes by Cliff Wilkerson, it's a short story collection. When I was working on it, Cliff told me he just wanted to see his name in print. And now that he's got his book out through Infinity Publishing, I think he's realized he's done more. He worked very hard on this book, and if he'd been involved in an MFA program, he'd have a master's degree in writing as well as a book.

The point I'm making is this: Self-publishing is no longer the domain of deep-pocketed hacks--if it ever was. I've been involved with several projects where the writing was excellent and deserving. Ultimately, it will be up to the market to decide. Or maybe the publishing industry will demonstrate what aloof wisdom they possess and fall on their faces like the automobile industry, the airlines, the banks, and all the rest of the world we've been taught to place our trust in. And then we the people will own them, too, and we'll all be self-publishing.

Check out Cliff's book by clicking on the cover:

2008-12-13T10:25:00.002-05:00

There's two ways of looking at this: positive, or negative. I'm talking about my submission of The Innkeeper's Husband to Chronicle Books in San Francisco. That was eight--almost nine--weeks ago. The positive way of looking at it goes something like this: I didn't receive a note a week after they received my book saying no thanks. Publishers generally respond quickly to manuscripts they're not interested in, so I'm looking at it that way. But eight weeks is the time within which Chronicle said they'd reply to the book. So next week I'll query them and find out the status of the book. This is superstitious territory for writers.

We're a mistrustful bunch. To make it as writers, we must develop thick skin. But none of us rejoices in rejection. It's terrible. It casts doubt on our essence, on who we really are. So we hide from it. We go for a walk and whistle and act like we're well-adjusted, when inside we're a train wreck in slow motion. Baby's in black and I'm feeling blue.

No matter what the outcome, I'm confident that the book will find a publisher somewhere. It's unique and appealing, with a wry, refreshing point of view. In the mean time, I've wrapped up the fall semester classes I taught at Community College of Vermont, and I'm working on a new novel, as well as a paper I hope to publish in an upcoming issue of Writer's Chronicle. I have to stay busy; it's what I do. Plus, it relieves the nausea of not knowing the fate of The Innkeeper's Husband.

Wits, Death, and Publishing

2008-10-04T14:55:00.002-04:00

In the movie The Princess Bride, there is a scene where Wesley, disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts, enters a battle of wits with Vizzini, the man who has kidnapped Princess Buttercup. As they face off Vizzini says to the approaching Wesley, "So, it is down to you, and it is down to me."
And so it is with my book, The Innkeeper's Husband. It is down to potential publishers, and it is down to me. This, gentle readers, is where the rubber meets the road.

Submitting your work for publication is not for the thin skinned, weak-kneed, or faint of heart. It's the yang to the creative yin of writing. After all, what is writing if it is not read by readers? It is the sound of a tree falling in a forest with nobody to hear it, the sound of one hand clapping. It is love unrealized. So writers launch into the mad scramble of the publishing world their work, their effort, their essence.

And that's my job now. I'm compiling lists of publishers that might be interested in the memoir of an innkeeper/writer/teacher, something a little offbeat, something as eclectic as the inn he owns. It's not an obvious task, and not one that I relish. And even as I know there will be rejections, they will force me to refine my pitch, to hone my query letters, to more precisely target the right publisher.

If there are any agents or publishers out there who want to help me avoid further thickening my skin, by all means contact me as soon as possible. Otherwise I'll have to remember Vizzini's warning--the one he uttered just before he keeled over dead--and I'll have to decide whether I need to avoid a land war in Asia, or avoid Sicilians in games of death. Hmmm, trying to find a publisher sounds more tenable in light of that. Wish me luck.

Aging

2008-08-19T14:29:00.002-04:00

I have a great book that I use for teaching creative short fiction called On Writing Short Stories. In the book, several authors are profiled, and their work is studied. One author, Andre Dubus, was asked how he writes. "I gestate," he answered. Ahh, to be blessed with that kind of time.

Everything needs to gestate. Food needs to be digested. Romance needs time to flourish. Words need to be measured. And book-length writing needs time in the bottle, time to develop flavor and character the way good wine does. It's one of the many intangible things that can't be taught about the craft of writing.

The Innkeeper's Husband has been sitting in the cellar for most of the summer. I've taken it out, and worked hard on it the past few weeks, polishing, crafting further what shape I want it to take. I did something unusual for this book, something I've never done before: I allowed the person I trust and respect more than anyone else in the world to read it: my wife, Chantal. I did this before I began the revisions. Her frank assessment of the book was like fresh air to me, helping me see things I missed, giving me the energy I needed to complete the work.

So now it's ready. Let's find out if everyone else it ready for it.

Confessions from a Nutty Innkeeper

2008-06-29T15:12:00.002-04:00

Okay, folks, here's how not to do it, here's how not to be a good innkeeper:

We had a check-in today, and I handled it badly. The gentleman showed up in my lobby, and I greeted him the way I've greeted thousands of guests who arrive at our place: "Hi, how are you today?" He immediately replied, "Not good. This isn't what we were looking for."

"I'm sorry," I said, "what were you looking for?"

"Something better."

That was the wrong thing for him to say.

"Are you saying there's something wrong with my place?"

"Well, the paint job outside--"

I cut him off. "Don't you dare come into my home and my business and insult me and all the hard work I've done here. I take a lot of pride in this place, and I resent being any implication otherwise. I invite you to leave. You should go find someplace else to stay. I won't even charge you anything for my trouble. Just leave."

He didn't.

"Well, can I at least see the room?"

"Under the circumstances that wouldn't be a good idea." And then he left.

I was incensed, and I let it show, and there's no excuse for that. But my thinking was this: What kind of person would come into a business--a little B&B--and insult the owner like that, right off the bat? What is that person like? Why didn't he just start off by introducing himself, saying, "Hi, I'm _______ , and we have reservations here, but I'm afraid it isn't quite what we were expecting."

We get that often enough; folks aren't ready for the little inn that's more like someone's house than it is a hotel. Usually there's some bartering that goes on, because we require a cancellation fee. Chantal has a great rap that goes like this: "How would you feel if I did that to you? Is that how you do business?" That makes sense, and it engenders--at least--civility.
But for someone who reserved a room with us to show up and say he was looking for something better? Wha? How can that be interpreted in any other way?

I was quick to react with this guest; maybe it was for the best, maybe it wasn't. But I knew instantly that I didn't want anyone who had the gumption to stand in my lobby and insult me staying here. Nor did I want to haggle with them. I wanted to send him away with something to think about, and I hope while he's trying to figure out what kind of nutty innkeepers they have up here in Vermont he'll devote some thought to his own words and actions.

I sincerely hope I don't scare anyone off. I'm hardly an ogre; I'm more of a happy, hard-working writer and teacher and father. But I'm proud of what Chantal and I have accomplished here, and I won't bow to the customer; he's not always right.

Please do your homework before you book, folks. We're a small, roadside inn with a bunch of eclectic rooms that feel more like home than anything else. And we'd love to host you.

Tempus Fugit

2008-06-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

There's really nothing like time to give things perspective. Winemakers know this. So do lovers. The difference is that winemakers learn from time, lovers forget. In the last post to this blog, I talked about a new novel, and how I was committed to it. That was pushed aside, though not for a new lover. I'm not sure of the story I was trying to tell in that book, and that's ultimately what quashed the energy. But what really happened was this book, The Innkeeper's Husband, and the ripple effect it had on my other writing.
I wanted this book to have a larger commercial audience than my first publisher could provide. I knew--I know--the book has more commercial appeal. But I thought I owed the publisher another book. So I dropped the novel and began working furiously on a new book, a compilation of my writing, something that could be used as a primer in creative writing classes. My thought was this: get the new book (working title: Creative Writing in the Real World) published, satisfy the second book option of my existing contract, then move on to finding a home for The Innkeeper's Husband.
I put the new book together quickly, in about a month. Collecting my previously published work, and organizing it into a coherent volume of writing that could be used as a tool liberated me in ways unexpected. For example, I never paused to examine what I'd written, but when I did, a pattern emerged: I'd spent as much time writing creative nonfiction as I'd spent writing fiction. That surprised me.
So now I have two new books to deal with, and it turns out that I don't owe the publisher another book, so I've got to find homes for both of them. It the kind of thing that simultaneously perplexes and excites me. There's a couple of more steps before I can start looking for representation for The Innkeeper's Husband. I need Chantal to read through it for accuracy and readability. Then I'll have a pro, like my friend and editor Nancy McCurry go through it for content and other high fallutin' stuff. Then it might be ready. I think this book will have wide appeal. Until then, I'll try to keep this space updated on the progress.

First Blush

2008-03-21T07:03:00.000-04:00

One of the things I tell my writing students is that writing is a lot like a relationship. I know, some of you are recoiling at the thought, but consider this: why wouldn't writing be like a relationship? Writing is as human as talking and sex, which are both parts of a relationship. Now that I have your attention, let me explain.
New ideas are exciting. Writers have fits of passion, moments to true clarity, where they envision an entire story, experience every emotion of every character, and are swept away. This is what drives us: to communicate that feeling to everyone else, to share something so important that burns inside us we've got no choice but to write it down, and fast. New relationships are the same way. The initial passion is impossible to resist. Two people simply want everything about each other, and they want to tell the world. But as the wiser among us know, the spike of passion that characterizes a new relationship diminishes. It doesn't go away completely, but it falls in temperature, until the happy couple is left with each other, and all those things they never noticed before. Relationships that are built for the long run take something else: commitment. And it's the same in writing. Ideas flood the writer, but what sticks is what's important to both artist and art.
I'm going through that with the novel I'm writing. The first twenty thousand words came pouring out of me; I was in love. But does this story have staying power? I think it does, and that's because I've got some important things to say through this work. But right now I'm in a regrouping mode. I have to go back, organize my notes a little, make sure everything makes sense. This novel and I are committed to each other, so I know we'll make it.

So This Is What It's Like To Be A Writer

2008-03-05T07:07:00.000-05:00

The other day I was sitting around, mulling my busy schedule. Actually, I wasn't sitting around. I was in a dead panic. I'd had to cancel one of my college classes due to massive snowfall (again, for the third time), and I was tinkering with the syllabus. I was also grading stacks of papers from the other classes, and I'd started a new writing project, a bildungsroman with the working title Penguins on the Mountain. And then I thought to myself, "So this is what it's like to be a writer."
Far from the stereotypical image of sitting around the cafe, getting drunk, and creating brilliant prose, being a writer means managing your life around your writing. Sometimes it can be the reverse: managing your writing around your life. Usually there's wavering between the two. I seem to have struck some kind of balance between the competing forces, however. The Innkeeper's Husband is down in the wine cellar, aging, until I call it forward for the revision process, which I discussed last time. Right now I'm creatively seized with the new novel mentioned above, and I've plunged 17,000 words into it in just a few weeks.
There's so much more writing I need to do, I'm not sure I'll ever have the time for it all. But I'll keep at it, because this is what it's like to be a writer.

Imagine that

2008-02-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened on the way to finishing this book: I left my job with FedEx. That happened on January 10, 2008. Three weeks and 60 pages of production later, the book is finished in rough form. Let me explain.
That doesn't mean that the book is finished. It means that the bulk of the creative portion of the writing is done. What has to happen next is the tough part: revision and rewriting. I'm going to print the beast out, sharpen my red pen, and start taking it apart. Then I'm going to do something I've never done before: I'm going to have Chantal read it. I need her different perspective, her point of view as a reader.
For me as a writer, this is an important step. I'm letting go more and more of my writing, and letting different perspectives enter into my formula. And it's something I'm really looking forward to. I crave knowledge of my shortcomings, because it will only make the book better.

Jumper Cables

2008-01-01T07:31:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't call progress on the writing of this book stalled. I'd call it the victim of a weak battery. One of my busiest autumns in recent memory finished with a flourish when I returned to the Mt. Mansfield Winter Academy as a teacher. This combined with the two classes I was teaching at Community College of Vermont, plus the onset of peak season at FedEx, as well as innkeeping. I was stretched a wee bit, and there were many Saturday mornings when it was all I could do to sit before my manuscript and tremble, waiting for nap time. Like the crucial line in Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" asks, "What's it gonna be boy, yes or no?" I faced a turning point in my commitment.
So I finally decided to leave FedEx. The decision was helped by an offer to teach two additional classes at Community College of Vermont. Removing the stress of lifting two thousand boxes a day should help with energy levels, plus I'll have three or four more mornings per week to write.
I realize that writers sometimes focus too narrowly on the physical limitations that affect their writing. I'm the first one to dispense the kind of advice to whining writers that leaves sensitivity in the dust: Quit yer bitchin' and write! But I've been grinding my way through the writing of this book, so I'm pretty sure more time--and time of a higher quality--will push the project along. I'd like to finish the first draft in the spring, maybe mid-May, then give it to Chantal to read. A summer rewrite would follow. It would be nice to have it ready for the fall.
Ha! Listen to me! Prattling on as if I have control over any of this. Oh well, all I can do now is run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it.

Publish or Perish

2007-10-12T18:33:00.000-04:00

Oh, how the creative have fallen. As the days shift from warm and sunny to dark and rainy, and the leaves are stripped and left for dead on the wet pavement, my writing output trickles.
Sometimes two or three days will go by without even a thought of opening up one of my many writing projects. My work on The Innkeeper's Husband is one of the victims.
Blame always lies with the will of the writer, and my will has been cannibalized recently by overscheduling. It's no excuse, but it's worth exploring, if only for the insight the writer might walk away with. First among time thieves is teaching. I have two classes at CCV this fall, English Composition and Dimensions of Learning. Comp is a demanding class, that takes lots of preparation, and even more homework for the teacher than the students. Reading and commenting on a stack of essays from budding college writers gobbles up time the way I chow down my lunch when I get back from my morning gig at FedEx. That gig (FedEx) is the second leading time bandit. Not only do I give five hours a day there, but I'm physically spent afterwards. Third on the list is the Auberge de Stowe. It's high season around these parts of Vermont, and I think I've made several hundred beds over the past couple of weeks. Add to that all the regular duties of the paterfamilias, plus a desire to get out and hunt a little, and there's just enough time to pass out at night before the alarm clock rings.
But all good writing must overcome the obstacles of life. If I can earn a master's degree while keeping essentially the same schedule as the one described above, I can finish a book, dammit. So I'll press on, and if the blogs are a bit neglected, then imagine me busy at work, writing. Or making beds.

Don't Ever Do This

2007-08-08T19:07:00.000-04:00

There are no rules. Sort of. Let me tell you a story.

When I was a little boy, my father was a lobster fisherman, among other things. But he was also a mechanic, with an uncanny ability and reckless courage to fix almost anything cast in metal. I would sometimes watch him work on an engine--usually the diesel engine of his boat--and wonder how he knew what to do. Dad picked up on the curious little boy, and was always careful to emphasize safety. Just before he stuck his hand into the whirling belts of the engine, he'd look at me and say, "Don't ever do this." Then he'd plunge his hands into the land of finger-eating gears and grinding cams and hungry pistons.

What Dad meant was this: he knew all there was to know about that engine. He knew exactly where to place his hands to fix what needed fixing, and he also knew the risks. He was deliberate and precise because he was a master of the engine. His nickname was Diesel Dan.

The same holds true in writing. When you learn the rules well enough to forget them, you have a lot of freedom. And that's the spot I found myself in recently in the writing of The Innkeeper's Husband. I decided to do something really radical: I inserted a short story, a work of fiction, right into the middle of the whirling gears of my non-fiction account of innkeeping. I didn't do it on a whim. Rather, I felt it was the best way to convey the point of view of the folks who come and stay with us. So I did it.

I'm not going to lose a finger doing this, and I carefully structured the work to lead smoothly into this fictional sideroad. But you never know. Still, it thrilled me to know that I have this ability, that I've got this kind of ability. And after all, who wants to read something that isn't a little risky? But just be careful: stories, like engines, are cranky things, sometimes possessed by gremlins. I've seen plenty of writers nicknamed "Lefty" to know that.

Hot Flashes of Obsession and How to Deal With Them

2007-07-24T15:52:00.000-04:00

I was reading John Irving's novel The Fourth Hand last week, and there's a little addendum at the end, bundled into a section called "A Reader's Guide." There's a piece written by Irving called "Why I Wrote The Fourth Hand When I Wrote It." Aside from explaining nearly everything about the book and its creation, Irving offers an interesting and useful insight
into the creative process. He describes how he interrupted the writing of A Prayer for Owen Meany to work on the screenplay for a previous novel, The Cider House Rules. In the essay (found on page 319 of the Ballantine paperback edition of 2002) Irving says, "It sounds strange, but my novels have benefited from my interrupting them...(during the novelist's absence, a novel that's off to a good start only stands to get better, but a struggling novel will become more difficult.)"

At first, this sounded intuitive to me. But I wondered how others felt about it. Getting caught up in the writing of a novel can be like the early days of a relationship. The temptation is to turn the burners up all the way and sweat it out. But novel-writing, like a relationship (and like most things organic), follows a naturally prescribed arc that spikes in the beginning, but levels off. Writing a novel demands stamina, and Irving touches on that need to self-regulate when he explains how he's found a way to deal with it. While many of us don't have the luxury of writing an Academy Award winning screenplay in the middle of writing our next novel, the exercise remains the same.

I'm in the middle of one of those hot flashes right how with The Innkeeper's Husband. Everything's flowing, the narrative is coming together, and I'm at a point in the writing where I can not only see what the completed work will look like, but why it will look like that. Like Mr. Irving, I also have a built in mechanism for interrupting my creative flow when it's pouring blood in all the right places. It's called My Life. Many mornings I wake up feverish and needing to write. Too bad. At 0500, I have to go to work. When I get back around noon, the inn invades my creative space. And then there's teaching, and family, and baseball, and The Food Network. I get to write on Saturdays and Sundays, and I have to concur with what Irving said: When I return to the work, I always discover new possibilities in the storytelling.

The Sound of Silence

2007-07-07T21:25:00.000-04:00

There are never any excuses for not writing. Because it's only one step removed from daydreaming, and because it takes only minimal physical exertion, writing can happen without any interruption, any excuses. So what stops us from writing? To answer that question, we need to examine the core of creation, a nearly impossible task.

For me, a burgoo of issues crawled up behind me. First, there was the Goddard graduation. Since most of my work on The Innkeeper's Husband takes place on the weekends, having all my old Goddard classmates back in town did nothing but distract me. But good writing always finds its way to the page, so that's not really an excuse. What could be bothering me, what could be distracting me from what I crave.

The answer might be somewhat ironic. My sons have gone away for two weeks. They're visiting cousins. As strange as it sounds, not having them around is a bigger distraction than having them around. I'm the kind of writer who needs to overcome something for it to have value. Without the boys around, I'm free to loaf, free to indulge, free to do anything but write. What I need is a serious dose of chaos to focus me.

The inn does the best it can in that department. But there's an imbalance, and I'm tuned into it. So the challenge becomes: can I overcome it and actually make progress on the book? After all, when September comes, I'll be teaching two classes at Community College of Vermont, and then my time will be at a premium. Somehow, I have a funny feeling I'll rise to the pressure. In the meantime, I have to figure out a way to rise to the sound of silence.

Structure and the Story

2007-06-23T08:20:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest challenges I face in writing The Innkeeper's Husband is maintaining a strong sense of structure while keeping the story interesting. And by strong sense of structure I mean something that the reader doesn't notice. Structure can be expressed in many different ways. The most popular way is to adopt a chronological order. That's what I've done, for the most part. But there are times when it's necessary to jump around little bit, and that can lead to trouble.
This morning, I was embarking on a chapter called "Three to Five." I hope that sounds like a sentence handed down by a judge, because it's supposed to. It's also the number of years it takes to get a small B&B up to speed. If you can survive the first three to five years in this business, you'll probably make it. The theme of the chapter revolves around the time we got that advice. We'd just become innkeepers, and one savvy, long-time innkeeper leaned over to us at a business reception and delivered that line: "The first three to five years are killer. If you can make it through that, you'll be fine."
Not exactly what brand new innkeepers wanted to hear, but we took her seriously. And in that chapter, I want to related the fears we had during the first few years, how we lost money constantly, how damn poor we were. So, as I wrote, I started drifting back toward the origins of our innkeeping dream. After three pages, it dawned on me that I might have already talked about our beginnings, and in fact I had, in an earlier chapter. That's what I mean about structure relating to the story.
I'm not writing this book from an outline; that's not the kind of writer I am. But maybe I should get a little more obvious in my structure. I can always go back and soften that during the revision. What this morning taught me was something I'd already learned as an innkeeper: you've got to have a plan, and stick to it, but not too tightly. Let the art shine through, take a little chance on yourself without losing sight of the structure. Then your readers--or your guests--will experience something they're not even aware of.

Five Years

2007-06-17T07:10:00.000-04:00

One of the things I'm bringing out in this book is the time things take in innkeeping, or any other business. Success--no matter how you define it--takes time. I remember when we first came to Stowe and began meeting other innkeepers, several long-timers said the same thing to us: five years. One woman didn't even preface her statement, she just said, "Five years." Meaning, if you can stick around for five years, you're going to be okay. Chantal and I looked at each other and our eyes glazed over. Sure, we'd dreamed about staying in this business forever, but to hear it put so plainly was discouraging.
In trying to relate that feeling, that dreamy notion of time and the future and how they relate to success, I'm reminded of Ernest Hemingway's struggle to do exactly the same thing. Hemingway was concerned with the truth, and his efforts were always aimed at being able to render that "one true moment" on the page, an arrangement of words that would evoke the feelings, the emotions of the moment that lived so passionately and vividly within him.
How do I do that in this book? How do I convey that feeling of infinity that we felt when someone said, "Five years"? Sometimes the answer is as old as the lesson teaching it: show it. I'll let you know how it turns out--I just hope it doesn't take me five years.

Time and Angst

2007-06-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

There's no rush. Really there isn't. At least that's what I keep telling myself. I'm not on deadline, and nobody's contracted me to write this book, so I can make my own schedule. But it doesn't always work out that way. There is a certain amount of inertia associated with writing a book. When you get going, nothing can stop you. You're hot. You're A-Rod in April, Reggie in October. You're channeling, your body possessed by your muse, who's busy vomiting words through the tips of your fingers and onto your keyboard. And when you're not hot, you're cold. Your arms feel paralyzed. You become obsessed with cleaning your writing space. You type "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" over, and over, and over. Then you go pour yourself a drink.
I'm not describing writer's block here, because, like R.O.U.S.'s (rodents of unusual size), I don't think they exist. What's really going on is a time management problem. Just as I took on the writing of The Innkeeper's Husband, I found myself in the middle of dozens of other projects. I also decided to begin a novel, tentatively called Exoskeletons. Then there are the blogs, but I don't count them as negatives, because they tend to infuse my writing with energy. Same for the journal I started keeping. With me, writing success if often a matter of giving myself too much to write, because I've got so much to say it gets backed up easily.
What really cut into my time was a nasty spring cold that left me feverish and on my knees for three days last week. That delayed the opening of the pool by a week, really tossing my schedule into the dump. Plus I'm preparing for two college classes that I'm teaching in the fall. And then there's the usual host of odd duties around the inn.
So when Saturday morning rolled around and I sat down in front of The Innkeeper's Husband and nothing happened, I lost it. I turned into a monster, stomping around, growling at everyone all day. That, combined with my inability to get a reading and book signing at the Stowe Free Library, frazzled me. It's Sunday afternoon now, and I'm not sure I've recovered from all that angst. It really wrecked me. I had a good two hours this morning, and that helped. But ultimately I know that writing the book will be a matter of capitalizing on the times when the fever hits, and slogging my way through the times when nothing's happening, like this weekend.

Let the book begin!

2007-06-07T15:57:00.000-04:00

Reader's of Innkeeping Innsights in Stowe will know that in my last post, I began talking about my next book, The Innkeeper's Husband. After I wrote that post, I began thinking that creating a separate blog for that book wouldn't be a bad idea. I've enjoyed Innkeeping Innsights for so long, why not do it for another? And so here we are.
I've got about 40 pages written, and I'm loosely following the structure of my InnSights columns that appeared in the Stowe Reporter from June, 2001, to September, 2002. The Innkeeper's Husband is about innkeeping at the user level, a Mayle-esque look at life in a Vermont ski town through the eyes of small innkeepers. Like all my writing, it's funny AND scary. Most of all, it's real.
The blog will follow the trajectory of the book. Right now I'm spending a lot of time with those articles written several years ago. My biggest challenge is the challenge facing all nonfiction writers: structure. Should it be chronological or topical? Should I jump around, or create a thematic thread? I've settled on a loose chronology, but I'll move around a little, combining timing with the theme.
And what IS the theme? The theme does a lot to debunk many of the myths around innkeeping, but it also reinforces many of those myths, too. It's a glimpse at how a small business works in modern America, how a family makes choices. It's about hard work, frustration, and fun. But most of all, it's about running an inn in Stowe, Vermont. Keep checking back.