it's the heart that matters more

Today was, I have to say, pretty much perfect. I got up at a reasonably early hour (8:30ish, such an early bird), made some tea, ignored the internet and all the people in the dining room, and crawled back into bed with my laptop, where I successfully wrote four pages. YAY. Then I showered, made myself look reasonably cute (for a crazy person surrounded by other crazy people), and crawled into the back of a van to go to lunch. Luckily the van was driven by someone on my retreat, so it was safer than it sounds. We went all the way to the very end of Montauk to see the lighthouse (Montauk's motto seems to be 'the end', since it's the absolute end of Long Island, and thus the absolute end of New York - it's on every piece of clothing one can acquire here, and acquire I have done). Since it was raining, we didn't bother to get out; instead, we went to a lovely restaurant, where we had a v. leisurely late lunch. I had some chowder, which was closer to Manhattan chowder than Boston chowder, and it was delightful; then I had diver scallops, which were tasty but didn't have as many carbs as my writerly soul was craving.

However, it was all super perfect, even with (or perhaps especially with) the rain and mist and atmospheric greyness. When we got back to the house, I played around with some cover art, then realized I was squandering my hour/day/week/life, and so I panicked and fled the house for the coffee shop, where I succeeded in writing another six or eight pages. DOUBLE YAY. I'm really loving the scene I wrote today, and I'm feeling good about things in general when I forgot other things like deadlines.

But by sixish I was done, so I bought a super cute Montauk sweatshirt, bought an equally cute (but less Montauk-y) scarf, came back to the house, and sat around for a few minutes. Then, Anne, Barbara and I went out for pizza, since it was easier than cooking, and that was fun too. Then we came home, I plotted and schemed with Grace and Anne, and I drank most of a bottle of red wine and generally relaxed and enjoyed talking to other crazy writers.

Now, though, I really need to sleep so that I can repeat some of this tomorrow - I want to write in the morning before I get too caught up in other things, and some of us have hatched a grand plan to escape Montauk and go to the nearest Starbucks in East Hampton so we can a) work and b) procure a Starbucks mug to add to my depressingly bourgeois collection. And so, goodnight!