© 2008 Kate Amatruda
Tuesday, February 20
1128 Hours
Scrunched into a slippery orange chair at the DMV, I’m waiting with my 15-1/2 year old son to see what he needs to do to get a learner’s permit. With my Supermom powers of detecting danger where none exists, I’m conjuring up exploding gas tanks, road rage and high-speed crashes. I shudder at the picture of my boy in a vehicle going 65 mph. My nickname as a child was “Chicken Little” for my propensity to worry that the sky was falling.
Wendy Merrill’s March/April column, “How Chasing Mr. Wrong Led to Mr. Write,” is still front and center at Roadwork on the Left Coast Writers site - http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/category/road-work/ - but you’ve already read it, right? Now, if you haven’t submitted something to Roadwork yet yourself, what are you waiting for? Contact Pat to submit your story or to pitch an idea. Roadwork@Leftcoastwriters.com.Are you ready for Roadwork?
Roadwork is the LeftCoastWriters.com on-line column about travel, writing and the writer’s life. All members of Left Coast Writers are welcome to submit an essay of 800 to 1000 words to editor Pat Bracewell at Roadwork@Leftcoastwriters.com for on-line publication. A new Roadwork column is posted on our website every other month.
© 2008 by Wendy Merrill
The reason I attended the Maui Writers Conference that year was not because I’d dutifully saved my money, planned ahead, and was finally ready to put myself out there after years of hiding behind my fear of being rejected in a noble effort to publish my yet-to-be-written memoir. No, the real reason I decided to attend the conference that year was simply because I was chasing yet another good-looking-commitment-phobic-he’s-just-not-that-into-me man/boy with mother issues with whom I’d had a brief affair while on vacation in Maui, and I wanted to appear to have a legitimate reason to return to the scene of the crime.
© 2007 by Joanna Biggar
They called us the ‘Thelma and Louise’ of journalism.
In June of this year Writers Workshops International organizers, Barbara Euser and Connie Burke took yet another group of writers out on an amazing travel writing adventure. This time the participants journeyed through County Cork, Ireland. Writers Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar directed workshops in between the far-ranging peregrinations. This, again, is some serious “Roadwork.” The anthology containing all of their stories will be out in December, distributed nationally by Travelers’ Tales. Meanwhile here are some excerpts from a few of their delightful stories…
© 2007 by Nicole Clausing
Working at home means I see what goes on around the block during working hours. The woman who lives across the street may wonder what Buddy, her white terrier, does all day alone while she’s at work, but I know. (A lot of standing on the couch, making nose prints on the window, and barking at people walking by.)
For a short spell in April of this year a small group of Left Coast Writers became part of the world that inspired Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner and Harper Lee. Their hosts, Martha Greenway and Mary Brent Cantarutti, both South Carolina natives, invited them to visit the rural South and write about it—definitely “Roadwork” as we see it. Here is a collection of excerpts from works-in-progress.
– Linda Watanabe McFerrin
© 2007 by Elizabeth Weaver
These are some of the thousands of questions asked and answered by fellow writers on NaNoWriMo forums. While NaNoWriMo may sound like a tiny rhinoceros, it’s actually short for National Novel Writing Month, which happens each November through www.nanowrimo.org.
Where Gods Walked© 2007 by Patricia Bracewell
It was nearly twilight as I navigated my way on foot down the steep curves of the only street that winds through Positano, Italy. I had arrived by ferry the night before, but had had little chance until this moment to experience Positano itself. Now, having watched from my hotel terrace as the late October sun turned the town’s cream colored houses to gold, I had ventured out to see what the place had to offer. The sun had disappeared behind the limestone cliffs that ring the town when I emerged from a stairway into a little piazza. To my surprise I found myself facing a large ceramic plaque proclaiming that John Steinbeck had once lived there, and that he had immortalized Positano in an essay that he wrote forHarper’s Bazaar in 1953.
Discovering the Heart of Copper Canyon
A lone Tarahumara woman sits in the shade of the trees on the edge of the cliff above our hotel. I watch her from the hotel terrace about a hundred yards below. I can tell who she is from the bright pink skirt, yellow print blouse and the green scarf that frames her dark hair and skin. She sits quietly after a long day of weaving baskets and dealing with tourists - a difficult transition for a shy tribal woman whose culture is not open or aggressive.
© 1993 Christine Krieg
My story begins with a community of a thousand men and women. Okay, okay, mostly men and let me tell you, I didn’t mind that one bit! We were traversing the east coast of Tassie (that’s Aussie slang for Tasmania, that island to the south of Australia that once got left off an official map. That ought to tell you a thing or two about how isolated some of the folks here might feel. Who can blame them for doing things their own special way?)
© 1993 Christine Krieg
My story begins with a community of a thousand men and women. Okay, okay, mostly men and let me tell you, I didn’t mind that one bit! We were traversing the east coast of Tassie (that’s Aussie slang for Tasmania, that island to the south of Australia that once got left off an official map. That ought to tell you a thing or two about how isolated some of the folks here might feel. Who can blame them for doing things their own special way?)
by Cheryl McLaughlin
It was one of those third-shift nights. I was done with the busyness of the day and the silence of nighttime surrounded me like a huge bubble—that safe place where I could finally hear myself think—when I sat down to write yet another practical, bulleted how-to article, “The 7 Keys to Managing Competitive Stress.” But this wasn’t just any article. It was an opportunity, for I was one of the few professionals—and the only woman—asked to be a contributor to The Sport Psychology Manual for Coaches, a publication which would be used to train coaches throughout the country. Once again, I was up against a should have been done yesterday deadline and I was praying for clarity.
What are the 7 things coaches need to know to help their athletes manage competitive stress? I asked as I placed the numbers 1 to 10 down the page. (It’s helpful to brainstorm a few extra for good measure.) I set the alarm on my ACT contact management software to beep me in five minutes and jotted down notes. Short, timed writes, I’ve learned, help me write fast and freely.
by Robin Sparks
There are the plans you have for your journey, and the plans your journey has for you.
Things to do in San Rafael, Argentina:
1. Get an appendectomy.
We were watching the gauchos gallop into town when it was decided that I should see a doctor. I’d felt queasy all day, but, when it began to hurt when I breathed, I knew it was more than the bottle of Malbec wine we’d drunk the night before.
By Deborah Griffin
Roadworks: Deborah
I pressed the bumper sticker onto my dashboard. Good Girls Go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere. It was my mantra for the trip I was about to take. For the first time in my life I would be on the road with no destination. Every other trip I’d taken was charted to within an inch of its life, mapped and reserved ahead with a quota of miles per day. Not this one. Part spiritual quest, part art journey, this would be a trip with time to think, to make decisions about the rest of my life. On the passenger seat lay a new journal, its smooth pages ready to record with words and sketches the adventures that lay before me.
By Marsha Black
By December of 2001, a quiet blanket of winter white covered Yosemite Valley. The event was so unusual that it made the local news for a week, catching the attention of Bay Area residents, including my husband and myself.
I think most of us needed relief from the personal and national disasters of 2001. We certainly did. Mentally and physically exhausted, our enthusiasm and energy flagged. Our bodies ached. Instinctively, we turned to Yosemite’s familiar retreat, hoping that the pristine beauty would refill our spiritual and physical reserves.
By Nancy E Rapp
In the fall of 2003 I found myself intrigued by the lyrics of Loreena McKennitt’s song,
Dante’s Prayer.
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me.
I wondered what it was that McKennitt wanted us to remember about Dante, who was, to me, a rather mysterious figure from the Middle Ages. I did a little research into the historical Dante Alighieri, and some of what I discovered struck me as significant in today’s post-9/11 world.
by Claire Savage
When I first heard about the trip to the Arctic, visions of polar bears, reindeer, and jolly old Santa Claus danced in my head. Childhood fairy tale scenes of The North Pole were all I knew of land and sea beyond latitude 50 degrees north, having never ventured farther north than Vancouver, British Columbia. In spite of my fairy tale images I still feared the journey to this remote hinterland. Would the barren landscape and frigid temperatures be too much to bear?
