Have Laptop, Will Travel: England's Lake District and More with Gretchen Woelfle (Guest Post)

Derwent Water, Lake District, England

My friend Gretchen Woelfle is spending three months in England this spring, beginning with a writer's workshop in the Lake District.  I think you will enjoy reading about her adventures!  Gretchen is a children’s book author whose newest books are Write On, Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren and  All the World's a Stage, A Novel in Five Acts.  Find out more at www.gretchenwoelfle.com .
 
 One of the best things about being a writer is our portability, which can incite mobility. Long ago when I was an MFA student at Vermont College, I met a visual arts MFA student who complained about the mighty costs and problems of shipping artworks to the twice-annual residencies.  We writers only had to pack our floppy disks – and now our laptops.

Nonfiction writers aren’t quite as portable as our fiction-writing cousins.  Speaking for myself, my desk is littered with loose papers, file folders bulging with notes and photocopies, books piled high on said papers and stuffed into overflowing bookcases.

Sheep in the Lake District

But the lure of mobility forced me to rethink my portability in March 2012 when I flew off the England to attend the twentieth anniversary retreat of the Kindling Words writing workshop in the Lake District. Fourteen of us spent a week at a four-star hotel, eating four course meals each night, hiking along the lake, into the woods, and up the hills (but not enough, I fear, to work off those four-course meals.) 

Castlerigg stone circle, Lake District

Highlights:  Venturing forth to local literary haunts of Wordsworth and his reputable and disreputable Romantic cohorts. Circumnavigating a Neolithic stone circle. Me alone, finding a local pub to watch a Saturday football (soccer) match featuring my beloved team, Chelsea. Indulging in an Exotic Lime & Ginger Salt Glow at the hotel spa. (I can describe it, but it will be just as intriguing for you imagine the sensuous pleasure of it.) And, yes, attending workshops and writing. 

Seven writers, headlights shining, about to descend into the subconscious of their protagonists, or was it the Honister Slate Mine?

Though I wasn’t the only nonfiction writer there, many were tapping away on fantasy novels. As they retreated to their imaginary worlds by the fireside in the lounge, I time-traveled back to eighteenth century Revolutionary America, to meet my biography subjects.  As others were drawn by guided meditations into the subconscious minds of their protagonists, I tried to do the same, but was interrupted by an annoying inner voice whispering, “Document your sources.”

When the luxurious week was over, I took off for East Yorkshire to visit old friends, including a writer, who live by the sea.  One of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms will soon arise off the Yorkshire coast, but not soon enough to be pictured in my next book, The Wind at Work, a history of wind energy.  So here, instead, is a picture of the local beach with dog Libby chasing a seagull.

 One evening, Marvin Close, my writer friend, arranged an interview on the local radio station, BBC Humberside. The topic of the interview: how a children’s writer from southern California came to be an obsessed fan of English football in general and Chelsea Football Club in particular. I tried to mix it up with writerly talk, but not having many people to discuss football [soccer] with at home, I was happy to talk about the sturm und drang of the current Chelsea season.

View of Notting Hill Gate

Now I’m in London for three months, thanks to my latest travel adventure: home exchanging. Sitting in a top-floor flat in Notting Hill Gate with sun streaming in on all sides -- I brought it with me from LA! -- I’ve got several manuscripts in progress, a few file folders stuffed with research, just a couple of books I need to work with, and – since yesterday, a brand new card from the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library system. (They’ve got all sorts of wonderful Dickens programs scheduled in this, his bicentennial year, and since he is my #1 favorite author, I’ll be there.) 

I’m still immersed in the American Revolution, which has a whole different significance from where I sit now. And I’ll be on the lookout for a new subject to research on the ground here. Something about English football perhaps?

More anon on the joys of a writer’s portability and mobility.

Derwent Water, Lake District