The Day I Leave the Manuscript at Home

This is my perfect day. On this day, I can leave the manuscript at home. It has been surviving for many mornings without me. A day or two more of absence will not do any literary damage. I want to go for a long walk alone. I will leave a written plan for Nate and come home as a person who has looked beyond a page.

This isn’t a family walk. Our Sunday loop has its own place in my life, with books, snacks and the ambitions of two different kids. The walk I am dreaming of is part of my monthly solo time. I love my family and enjoy a break from discussions about pinecones.

I’ll start with some coffee first, hot and dark, looking out the window on a pale morning. I’ll go for a walk near Bend, with time to sit, a little river to follow, no summit to conquer. I like a destination with some flexibility, some potential for the unexpected.

I’ll leave a written route of my walk for Nate. He is my husband and I can rely on him. He does his share of household things and I don’t need to arrange a big display of gratitude for it.

My bag for the day will contain water, some food, a map of the route and a book. There is room for a headlamp too. I may carry the book the whole way and never open it. As a librarian, I feel that a little unreasonable loyalty to reading is acceptable.

Before I go, I research the route for the information I want to know about it. This is part of my pleasure for the route, the names, the questions. Today I do not have to repeat what I found out about the route for the walk. I can keep the knowledge useful in the background.

At the start, I’ll put away what I won’t need in my hands. I want to be able to focus on the walk itself. The air is cool, so I’ll be happy to set off straight away. It’s dry, with a juniper smell. I’m always suspicious of details like that on a page, but I’m happy to let them take me by surprise on the walk.

My thoughts start with work and then turn to the second novel. I give both a little time and keep walking. I do not expect nature to clear my mind for me, another demanding task.

My thoughts are drawn to the river. Light plays on the surface of the water. I stop at a place where I can look down on it without blocking the path of other walkers. For a moment I have no use for this beautiful scene, other than to look at it. I wish I could stop making material out of every pleasure I have.

I moved to Bend in 2017. I love the open sky, the river trails, and the dry air. I have many thoughts on the growth of this town, but my love for this place does not make it mine. I moved here myself, and I do not want to forget that.

The walk continues at a moderate pace, allowing for occasional pauses to take in views. I’m happy with an uneven pace, as my work is to provide information to others and on this walk I will need very little information from anyone.

A bench is a perfectly respectable destination. In this imagined morning, I find a seat with enough room to settle my bag beside my feet. I drink some water and take out the book. The cover is warm from the light. I read a few pages without thinking about how they compare with my own.

This is harder than it should be. Reading can become a private performance review of one’s own work when one has a completed novel in a drawer and another in progress. I miss the younger me who only read to find out what happened next. For this pause, I let her read as she wishes to read the pages before me.

I close the book before I am tired of it. I eat, look around and let the bench remain a bench. No need to come up with some conclusion of my own for the walk. A bench is a good place to sit, and that’s about it. It doesn’t need to reveal anything to me.

Being alone outdoors is important to me, and I want Ivy to know that her mom is into more things than just trying to be of use to her and her brother. I want Theo to know this too. Their dad already knows. This time of mine can be part of our lives together, as opposed to taking away from them.

I have not always been good at making room for myself. There were years where I let someone else dictate what my ambitions should be for a long time. I left that relationship when I was 26. I don’t need to go back there on every walk I take, but a quiet departure from my home is a complete exercise of freedom for me.

I turn toward home without feeling that I have wasted the pause. I don’t feel as if I have wasted any time, and the book goes back in the bag. The path is what I have been paying attention to and a small stone in my shoe is dealt with and then forgotten. There is time to deal with it.

I can be a bit vain. I can improve a sentence in my head and be pleased with the result. But this morning the sentence has competition from the water, from the juniper, from the work of other people. I can read their work without feeling that it is going to threaten me in any way.

The view back is familiar but with the light altered, and I enjoy this change of perspective. No great discovery is required of me, no novel experience that no other person has had before. I can be first at nothing and be content. After querying agents, the absence of a selection process feels restful.

I think of the writers’ group I run. Making room for other people’s writing is work I value. It reminds me that writing continues in ordinary lives, around jobs and family and doubt. I want my own work to live there too. The perfect day cannot depend on becoming a more successful person before breakfast.

I’m looking forward to Nate and the children as particular people I love. This doesn’t mean I won’t have been happy on my walk, just that I’ll be happy to return to the life of the family as well.

At home, I return things to their places. I leave the book within reach. There is food for later and things for the family to do. I don’t need to recount my walk of the morning to them. It was a good morning and that is enough.

Later, I can return to the second manuscript. The walk hasn’t finished it for me, but that’s not what I was looking for anyway. I’ll open the file, read the latest pages and begin to work on the next small section of it. It will be easier to sit down to write after having done something with no publishing outcome attached to it.

I want the evening to include the untidy company of the people in this house. Ivy will have opinions. Theo will want snacks sooner than I expect. Nate will be himself, which is a great deal of what I want from a day.

I want to write this kind of column. I am interested in public spaces and people’s right to enjoy them. I like to write about practical aspects of outdoor excursions and how to make them happen. Sometimes I can be sharp but I always try to be fair and use my sharpness to the advantage of the reader, not to make myself look better by finding fault with others.

At some point I wash the cup I took my morning coffee from. The small job of washing up brings the day back to its ordinary scale. I like the idea of a river walk and a kitchen sink in the same afternoon. A life arranged entirely around memorable scenes would leave a remarkable amount of washing up undone.

Before bed, I return the manuscript to its place. The book from the bench remains close by. No need to dwell on the walk and its ending. I had a good walk alone and came home to people I love. It can count as a good day without needing to be anything more.