Sun, tomorrow? Perhaps. All day from my hotel room I watched the sleet/snow/rain/wind. Tonight, once it was dark, in the glow of a streetlight I could see the snow blowing sideways. Still, not much on the ground. My boots, my hat, my jacket, my socks, my scarf are drying out from my walk into town, late morning. It was sleet and rain pricking my cheeks. To a coffee shop I went with my backpack. Worked in my wet clothes, had coffee and bought lunch to go. Felt happy about the pictures I took on my way. Felt happy about my progress on the manuscript. Ordering the storm, as they say. Jane, who always asks me wonderful questions about my blog wondered how I slept in the bed with all those pages covering it! Well, I cleaned them up carefully before going to sleep last night. Spread them again today. I am pleased with the concepts I’ve been working on for my order of poems, my sense of this manuscript as a whole. My helicopter view here. Reading, revising. Reading, revising. By tonight, I have gotten the poems selected for one of three sections. Progress! I am pleased that, instinctively, I have the time and the concentration to just keep moving through the process and feeling confident and interested and invested. Today, the storm of the manuscript cleared as the storm outside raged. Yay.

All seems to be well with Charlie and Brittany in my absence. I have planned to stay until Tuesday, but I may find the progress I am making will send me home sooner. Shall see. I missed my swim today.

I am grateful that I took Vanessa’s advice––that I needed this retreat to get to where I needed to get with my manuscript. The hard part, I can sense, is going to be pruning. What to leave out. I know I have too much. An abundance of material. The wind is blowing hard out there. I started, after all, the Eudora Welty biography. Some reading before bed, earned.