I remember long ago being out for a drive with my dad through the rural roads of Whatcom County. Suddenly we were in the small town of Sumas.
“How did we get here?” I asked, thinking we had been nowhere near this town.
“We snuck up behind it, so it wouldn’t see us coming,” Dad answered.
The idea of sneaking up on a town and surprising it was somehow hilarious to me. Like the town cares! But this idea of sneaking up behind places became part of our family lore. Why drive in on the main drag when you can sneak around from behind the hill? Hmmm, as I think about, it, that may explain my adult aptitude in getting temporarily lost. Regularly.
Today I am sneaking up on writing about my hometown of Blaine, Washington. I was in a slump. You know how sometimes we think we are supposed to be doing a certain thing, at a certain time, and then, somehow, we don’t? Or can’t? After spending so much time writing humor, poetry, essays, I got it into my head to try to write a fiction novel. Other people write novels, how hard can it be? They’re just a long format, right? I had planned to get started this winter. I knew where to set the novel, in my hometown of Blaine. I knew the scenes in the novel would include eagles, tide flats, harbors, and maybe an old dairy farm or three.
Yet there the idea sat, like a dead seal in the mud. I mulled it over and pushed it around in my brain like a kid with a piece of driftwood poking at a carcass. I thought it over in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. No plots announced themselves. No characters introduced themselves. The novel idea was beginning to rot. Seagulls were loudly circling. Still, my brain continued visiting Blaine, smelling the tide flats, looking across the harbor. I have finally determined I don’t have a novel in me.
Once I abandoned that idea like a leaking boat, I started writing out a story my friend had told me about living in Blaine. I was able to write a short, fictionalized scene. Not a full story, and definitely not a good draft, but at least the start of something. Or maybe the end of something if it doesn’t get better. Yet, getting started made me want to write more about Blaine. I still don’t feel a large work of fiction headed my way, but at least I’m getting some writing practice in. We’ll see what happens when I drive around Birch Point and sneak up on the scenes and stories of Blaine from the other side of the bay.
Michelle Eames 