We Confess

So, we weren’t lying when we tweeted that our recent in-person writing session left us exhausted but exhilarated. We do have a bit of a confession to make about that, however: the exhaustion and exhilaration came more from PURE PLAY than from productivity. Yeah, we often derive as much fun from our writing as our guys do from their fishing or shooting. But on this visit together, we did something we haven’t done for years, because our time together is so limited and precious and, we thought, has to be reserved for WRITING.

Maybe it was subconscious manipulation on our part, a yearning to entertain ourselves and each other as we did in the years before we started writing together. Whatever, we found our work-in-progress set in Door County, Wisconsin, where Patty lives and where Roz just came for our writing session/visit. So in the name of research, we did what people DO when they come to Door County! Things like: climbing to the top of the Cana Island Lighthouse; dining at Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant, where goats graze atop the roof; tasting wine at the Door Peninsula Winery; and attending the play Lombardi at the Peninsula Players Theatre, which sits among the trees on the shoreline of the Bay.

And hey! We found out some valuable info for our new book. We learned, for example, that the traditional dresses worn by the waitresses at Al Johnson’s do not come clear to the floor. Important stuff J But stuff, nevertheless, that kept us from the plotting that we’d planned to do. In other words, we aren’t much further along in our work-in-progress now that Roz has returned to Texas than we were when she arrived in Wisconsin.

Enter Skype, which might just be the best thing for our writing since we replaced our typewriters with computers and traded snail-mail for e-mail. I mean, what’s the difference whether we’re sitting at opposite ends of a couch, manuscripts and pens in hand as we take turns reading aloud and discuss changes needed and just where we should go from here, or whether we’re sitting on our respective desk chairs in front of our respective Skype cameras in Texas and Wisconsin?

We’re about to find out! Update to follow.

But first, some pictures from the week that was:

Roz (center) and Patty (right) take a break from plotting their latest, um, cliff-hanger to tour The Door with their editor Sarah.

Patty’s husband, John, and Roz’s partner, Mike, join “the girls” at Al Johnson’s.