I write to you, dear reader, from a strange but not particularly exotic location: Las Vegas. My husband, a tournament table tennis player, is competing in the US Open. I promised him and myself I would be a cheerleader this year. It’s a gala international event, one I have never attended before. But I am nearly at the end of the revision of my murder mystery and felt slightly frustrated by the interruption of packing and travel. This is not new; writers are always complaining that “life” gets in the way of the writing. I have my antidote: I keep working as I travel, I keep working if I have company, I write every day if only in my journal and notebooks. Writing, as Ernest Hemingway said so succinctly, is a “moveable feast.” And so I have brought: notebooks and fine-tipped pens that don’t leak in airplanes, my computer, my cell phone and my Kindle2. And I am spending some of the day away from the tournament hoopla alone in a room on the 25th floor of the Hilton—a modest hotel by Las Vegas standards—that is wi-fi’d and has a spectacular view of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the distance. The room, where I watched the sun rise this morning, has become my atelier for three days, and my writing routine—once I fully recover from a long, difficult travel day—will be similar to the writing routine I make for myself anywhere: early morning reveries, work-out, write, revise, surface from solitude, hang out with friends and family, have some fun, read, nap, swim, write some more, talk to people, ask questions, listen, record their stories.
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