It’s in the box, on its way into the great unknown. Within that box: angst, inspiration, fears, longing and untold hours of my attention are making their first journey to a potential publisher. My novel.

My insights, thus far:

1. It’s a good, good feeling (I’m short on adjectives at this point in the game). Because even if it doesn’t get accepted this time around, or the next, and so on, it’s still a milestone I wasn’t sure I’d ever reach. Normally, I write short fiction. This time, I wrote a lot of words that connect into one big story. Perhaps that’s why it has 101 chapters?

2. There is something unique about printing the whole thing off and wrapping it carefully in cardboard and tape: it feels real. Solid. Tangible. In a world of rapid-fire exchanges online, it’s become easy to feel detached about attachments. A file here, a file there, it’s all become a bit humdrum. But real words on real paper, well, wow. I put all those words together. I could seriously injure someone with that former tree.

3. Human eyes read words differently on paper. I have been printing off sections of this baby for years now, editing as I go, giving copies to friends and family for feedback. But I’ve been editing on screen as well, and moving things around, and tinkering, and it wasn’t until I printed off a complete hard copy that I was aware of what I’d missed. And what I wanted to change.

I’m talking about making a change on nearly ever page. Nothing substantive. Nothing that would change the plot or characters or motivations or outcome. Just little things here and there that might make the difference between an editor saying “yes” or “next.”

I’m sure I’ve still missed things. I could have gone over it another ten times before sending it. But I reached a level of satisfaction, at least at that moment or reprinting, and I have mailed it off.

4. It feels like a part of my brain has been removed. A part I grew especially for this book, a place where a town went about its business, a family lived, people died and loved and made impulsive decisions. And I don’t miss this part of my brain, because it’s not gone; it’s both in the mail and backed up elsewhere. I can let something else grow in there now.

5. I have a lot of people to thank for making this work possible, everyone from babysitters to my wonderful writing groups to mentors to the Canada Council. And my family. They’ve lived with me through all of it. Especially my husband, who’s heard every possible plot twist, dialogue issue and frustration; made meals; kept me sane. Thank you, one and all.

6. I’m back to focusing on short stories now, and that feels great. But I’m thinking of writing another novel. In fact, the next one’s already begun creating a space in my head. Onward, ho. But first, a nice long stretch for my back, which much prefers movement to sitting in front of a notebook or screen, and a celebratory drink. Cheers!

“The relationship I had with Irving was not personal but it was intimate. We weren’t friends in the sense that we knew or cared about each others’ lives. We did know and care about each others’ lives, but that wasn’t what it was about. That’s a personal relationship. This relationship was the poet talking to the poet about poetry. It was more intimate than a personal relationship could ever be. That kind of intimacy has sustained me my whole life and anything that is not that has always been troublesome.”

Leonard Cohen, in David Layton’s fabulous essay “Irving Layton, Leonard Cohan and Other Recurring Nightmares.” The Penguin Book of Memoir, ed Camilla Gibb, 2011. 

There is nothing quite like finishing a story. The first finish, I mean; the one where you write the last sentence and say, “Okay, I can call it a story now.” Oh, you know there is work ahead; many drafts later, you will have forgotten this wonderful moment of waiting beside the printer as it shimmies out your story. But the peace in this minute is probably my favourite part of writing.

A moment of silence, please. Ahhhhhhh.

Then, like the new car that depreciates as soon as you drive off the lot… well, let’s not go there just yet. Let’s breathe in the leather interior. Let’s feel those heated seats.

The hail stones about to fall? Never mind.

http://web.uvic.ca/malahat/documents/malahat_lite/jan12.pdf

In the meantime, it’s time to dig out the sparkly lights.

Bryce Canyon doesn’t give up its colour easily. We’re in our small motel room, in Tropic, UT, just north of Bryce Canyon National Park, where we have a window that opens, and no need for A/C to sleep, the first time since we left home. Bryce Pioneer Village Motel is a basic place, but Jim at the front desk, a transplant from California, makes it special. Despite the girls selling jewelry outside the door, who were playing with a yellow butterfly and hurting its wings, Tropic is a friendly sort of place. Jim is full of information, and assured us we could catch the sunset at Bryce, and mentioned “Sunset Point.” We found out later that it isn’t the best place to see said setting sun, but we did manage to capture some of the brilliance.

Seventeen years ago, I was here at dawn, after a snowfall, and my friend and I were the first people to walk into the canyon that day. We saw only a handful of visitors all day. This visit, above at the rim, we were among hundreds, but it didn’t diminish the grandeur.

And now we are taking the slow road to Salt Lake City, via an All-American Scenic Byway, Highway 12. Our lunchtime destination, as we ooh and ahh our way along this feat of engineering, is The Burr Trail Grill in Boulder, UT. We are all so ready for salads, after a week of All-American eating. This place is amazing. An oasis. After a trip to the Anasazi museum, where we examine arrowheads that are thousands of years old, and pit houses dating back a mere thousand, we eat wonderful food, and then head off to SLC.

These are the billboards we see:

 “Holding Out Help for Polygamists.”

Right before one for an Adult novelty story, in which a woman and man are embracing, fully clothed. “Lingerie specialist,” it tells us, no lingerie in sight.

“Tired of Feeling Normal? Bioidentical hormones for men and women.”

Advertisement for a local emergency room: “Current waiting time: 11 minutes. Get treated, not seated.”

“Erase your Past. Tattoo removal.”

And many billboards talking about cancer and recovery.

After what seems like hours of traffic, and crazy billboards, we end up in Sandy, a suburb of SLC, where another lovely Marriott greets us, thanks to my husband, the Associate, who gets us great deals. Another satisfying, “better than road food” meal awaits us, too, just around the corner at good old The Olive Garden. We eat like queens and kings, sleep like well-behaved babies, after watching “Footloose.” Appropriate timing, since it was filmed very close to there. We are relaxing before our last big driving day: SLC to Portland.

 The next day, on our way out, we think of stopping by the old salty sea, but we make a rookie mistake: the place on the map where the road runs alongside water is not the place to stop. It’s not salty here. It’s fresh water, in Willard Bay, collected from rivers nearby beginning in the 1960s. There is a lot of damming going on in this country, a lot of work for water. Canadians, on the whole, are very, very lucky.

 So, we don’t get to swim in the salt, or collect any oolitic sand, but we live by the ocean, after all. We can get salty anytime we like. We set our lovely GPS, Barbara, to Portland, Oregon and keep on truckin.’

 We stop for fuel in the middle of nowhere, which is what the signs say on the gas station, somewhere in Idaho. There are llamas here, and a food machine, and the fact that Napoleon Dynamite took place in Idaho is not lost on us. In fact, it’s been watched in the car on this very trip. Tina, come get some ham!

Twin Falls beckons us but we’ve got a long way to go before we lay our weary heads down, so we keep to the interstate and head for the Columbia River, stopping at the Gem In and Out in Caldwell, ID, for one last all-American fast food lunch experience.

Hours later, we’re at the river. Here’s where it gets surreal. No quiet country road along a little river, highway 84 is built at the edge of a roaring, cold waterway, strange, treeless landscape and oddly placed vineyards alongside. There are wind turbines for many miles, and trucks carrying their blades on the road, and it feels like we’ve moved into a future I don’t jive with. Finally, after many hours, and a stop in The Dalles for Safeway dinner salads, we hit trees, and then Portland, and we make it to our hotel in just enough time for a late swim before bed. Thirteen hours is a long time in the car, in one day, but we’ve made it. We’re nearly home.

We’ve given ourselves the luxury of a slow day to get to our ferry in Port Angeles, so we’ve got the morning in Portland. This means one thing to me: Powell’s Books. It’s my first time. I love a bookstore that needs a map. That sells new and used books on the same shelf. That, 90 minutes later, still has many undiscovered rooms for me to visit next time. Because there will be a next time, oh yes. I am in heaven.

I have to leave heaven, to get some lunch. But Portland is not only a literary nirvana, it’s coffee and sandwich heaven, too. Theo’s for sandwiches, Backspace for coffee, both on Fifth, in Old Town… we are back in the left coast foodie land. Ahhhh.

It’s only a few hours to the north coast of Washington, and those few hours are spent listening to my daughter enthuse over her new cupcake cookbook. It just may be her personal highlight of the whole trip. In Port Angeles, we park our trusty, bug-covered car in the ferry lineup and head out to find dinner. Who knew that decent Thai food could be found in PA? Thai Pepper fits the bill for our last meal on the road, and we catch a splendid Pacific sunset before getting back on the Blackball ferry, heading home.

And here we are. The nomad in me is ready to go again, especially returning to the chilly, sunless coast, but it’s good to be back. Good to let the body out of its steel machine, and not be hurtling through space at 80 miles an hour.  

 Here are some final road trip thoughts:

1. Country radio stations always come in the clearest.
2. Dust can be beautiful, when twirled into a storming spiral.
3. Roadrunners are faster than they look.
4. Tim Horton’s is something I miss when it’s not there, on the road, at every stop, even though I hardly eat there at home. America does not have a decent equivalent.
5. I thought there would be way more donut shops. I kept looking. Krispy Kreme, where are you?
6. 99% of public bathrooms in the USA are super clean, and have paper toilet seat covers. I love that.
7. Swimming pools and hot tubs at the end of the day are now de rigueur when taking a road trip. We have been spoiled. Motels just don’t cut it.
8. Coffee is generally quite bad, except in Oregon and Washington.
9. The light of the red rocks can never be fully caught on film.
10. Americans, no matter what else you might think of them, really are friendly folks.

After our tour, we emerge into hot sun and head directly to the strangest lake I’ve ever been in: Lake Powell. After a swim with the houseboats in a cold, slightly smelly pretend lake, beside a treeless, shelterless, scorched desert “beach,” we eat a picnic lunch and see a roadrunner pass by. Avery tries to catch it on film, but it’s faster than humans and coyotes. We return to the car, our chilled machine, and head for Utah, which is just on the other side of the water.