Frozen Fjords in Sogndal

Here's a post from March. I spent three days in a I-can't-believe-this-is-real cabin in a wee town in Norway, and it still remains one of my favorite spots.

I am in a haven of frozen fjords and floating snowflakes in Western Norway. Sogndal, near the Sognefjord, had been my home for the past three days, and I have done not much else besides eat, read, write, and sleep.

View from the windows.

I am every writer’s jealousy. I am sitting at a wooden table that oozes Norwegian kitsch and I am looking out of four huge windows onto the frozen fjord that is a few meters from the cabin. The rain that pounded the cabin for two straight days has yielded to its softer cousin, snow, and I’m watching the easy snowflakes rush towards the window, driven by the unabating wind, like fairies. The wind rattles the cabin, and the bare tree on the west side of the cabin chatters to me with every gust. This is like no place I’ve ever been before.

The cabin is six kilometers from town and about 10 meters from the main road, sheltered by rocks that would be a small cliff, save for the tiny foundation on which the cabin stands. The cabin is about 150 square meters and perfect. There is a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two bite-sized bedrooms with only room enough for a built-in bed and walking space.

And then there are the windows. The windows in this place are beautiful. In the summer, they must swing open wide with an easy unfastening of the latch and let in the breeze that comes from the fjord via the mountain tops. They let in the light and a bit of the cold, but they are a safe barrier through which to watch the frozen weather outside and the tiny cluster of houses across the way. This morning, a crab washed up on the island of ice right outside the cabin. It lay on its back, and I assumed it was dead. I left for a hike and when I came back an hour later, it was gone. I hope it slipped away silently back into the not-quite freezing water to go about its crab business.

This is a place where I wish some genius writing would pour out of me. I wish this Norwegian table would inspire my fingers to tap out incredible sentences and wise words. But instead, I sit here, drinking my tea, looking out at the coming snow, and try to write something that works. This is as good as it’s gotten since I’ve been here.

This cabin makes me feel guilty for not writing something spectacular. I have the whole place to myself until about 5 PM, and nothing “good” has flowed from my fingers. It’s frustrating to think about the late nights in college I spent clacking away at my Ikea desk and my running shorts still on, holed up in my loud apartment, writing things that I feel are beyond and above me now. I feel like I’ve taken a few steps back.

I can see that part of the problem may be that I’m expecting too much. It feels like if I were to write something brilliant anywhere, it would be here. That would be perfect. But this is just another reminder that my expectations are what cause me disappointment, not the actual situation. The pieces that I’ve written on this trip that I’ve liked so far have been written in a train station and on a bus. Those don’t strike me as very romantic writing spots.

My station.

And so, I think it’s time to let my cabin go for now. I can let it slip back into the ocean of expectations like my crab friend, and it can go about its cabiny business, sitting along a fjord in a frozen winter, pushing back against the wind.

I bet it’s beautiful here in summer.

The Writer's Workout

1)      Sit at your desk. Squirm around a little until you find a writerly pose, the one you’ll be sitting in when you begin your Next Big Story.

2)      Turn the computer on. While it boots up, get up and walk around your room. Poke at books you’ve read and embarrassingly ignore those you haven’t. Walk to the window and watch people outside. “They’re not writers—ha!” you think. “There’s no way a self-respecting writer would be anywhere besides her desk at this hour.”

3)      Walk into the kitchen and get a bowl of cereal. Sit at the table (in a newspaper reading pose) for about 10 minutes, until you’re absolutely sure that when you get back to your desk, your computer will be totally ready and give you a high five for sitting down for a day’s work.

4)      Go back to your computer. It’s up and running.

5)      Smash the keyboard with your fingers for about 35 minutes. Dismayed with your lack of good ideas and talent, get up from the desk and lie on the floor.

6)      Bemoan the fact that you’ve been chosen to be a writer and that if you even tried to do anything besides write, you’d be in for a life of discontent and unrealized dreams. Pound the floor three times for effect. Your downstairs neighbors will appreciate this.

7)      Get up.

8)      Sit in your chair. Assume a new writerly pose.

9)      Carefully pick out words on the keyboard. Soon, you will have one good sentence.

10)   You have one good sentence!

11)   In celebration, go and reward yourself by getting the mail in the sunshine. You needed a break anyway, that was hard.

12)   Open your mail on your front stoop. Bill, bill, rejection letter, rejection letter, card from Grandma with five dollars in it. Five dollars!

13)   Go back inside and assume writerly pose again. This One Good Sentence is going to need some company. No time for mail celebration! It’s time to write!

14)   Feverishly tick out words for the next two hours. Make your pinky work extra hard on the “backspace key.” At the end of these two hours, your pinky will be quite sore and your sunny disposition will be deleted just like your shitty partner sentences. Your One Good Sentence may have to get used to the idea of being alone for a while.

15)   Get up and walk around the house. Check to make sure the laundry room is still there, that the garbage bins out back haven’t been stolen, see that it’s still daylight. No, it’s not time for lunch. Dammit.

16)   Sit back down. Take out some paper. Maybe things will flow better on a good ol’ piece of parchment.

17)   They don’t. Throw the paper away in the trash bin. You do. No! You never completely get rid of any piece of writing. It’s all part of the process and you’re a big believer in the process. One day, after you’ve written your Next Big Story, you’ll look at this piece of paper as a building block for all that you’ve accomplished and you’ll be so glad you saved it.

18)   Take the paper out of the trash bin and smooth it out. Hell, tack it up on the wall, see what that does for you.

19)   Stare at your One Good Sentence. Glare at your One Good Sentence. What did it ever do for you? Fuck your One Good Sentence.

20)   Go for a walk. You need some space. The One Good Sentence just thinks it can rule your life? Absolutely not. Walk to the farmers’ market and indignantly buy some seasonal vegetables.

21)   Go back to your One Good Sentence. You were right—it’s a pretty damn good sentence. It may even be a springboard for an ok story. You don’t even bother to put away the seasonal vegetables on the counter. You’ve abandoned them in the doorway, and they can see you at your desk, hunched over in any sort of pose, tapping away quickly at our computer. The light outside fades, no one steals the garbage bins. After a while and 4,000 words, you look up and it’s after five o’clock. Your working day is officially over, but you sit hunched over your computer like someone who loves what she does and someone who wants to get better at it. You don’t get up for the next few hours. When you do, you close your computer, turn off the light, take your vegetables into the kitchen and make dinner. You don’t even bother to check if someone has or has not stolen the garbage bins out back. You’re a writer, not a detective.

22)   Eat dinner.

23)   Be proud of your One Good Sentence and all its friends.

24)   Repeat. 

The Writing Part of Writing

Many of you have inquired as to how the writing is going. To this, I say:

1) Thanks for remembering that a large goal of this trip was to write and

2)  Hard to say.

Sometimes I forget that I’m traveling to write. I find myself twisted in museum queues and passing days wandering canal-flanked lanes in search of stroopwaffel, and my pen writes nary a word.

I haven’t yet found the proper balance of traveling and writing. I think I’m secretly hoping that there’s some mathematical equation that will yield the proper answer.

I doubt it exists.

The blog has been doing a good job of keeping me honest and productive. However, it’s not really the type of writing that I usually do. It’s been turning to that direction, but it’s still a bit, well, superficial. Some posts I’ve actually been quite happy with. Others—less.

And so, the second part of my trip will be traveling, yes, but with more of a focus on the writing. I think this will get me in a good habit so that when I come home, I’m used to writing every day. Even if it’s a shitty first draft (Anne Lamott is a badass, and you should totally read her piece “Shitty First Drafts” if you have ever—even once—written something and immediately deleted it because you thought it was terrible http://www.orcutt.net/othercontent/sfds.pdf).

Here’s to: traveling+writing= !