I start by looking out my window. A cholla cactus in the sunlight. I let myself have those ten minutes. In the bed, both the cactus and me waking up. I love a cactus. I love the desert. I love the quiet space before I begin.
In the morning, I do very little to get ready. Brush my teeth, lather sunscreen, put on shoes. Then, walk the five to ten minutes to the dining hall. On these walks, I listen and notice. The chirping of birds, the grass with curly ends, try to find sage brush. I look at the mesa overlooking the grounds, the shades of rock.
At breakfast, I talk. There are eggs, hash browns, yogurt, toast, cereal, coffee, tea. I am cared for. The conversations are easy. We all agree on the same thing. We chose to be here, spend the money, make the trek, leave our loved ones for these three weeks. There is an understanding of how we want to be. When I speak, my voice comes out clear. In my main life, the one that takes up most of my time where I don’t share details about my writing, my voice gets caught inside me. When the group at the table asks me what I write, I actually tell them.
From nine in the morning to noon, I work on the novel. It is printed on pink pages and strewn together by a black binder. Back in January and February, I read through the novel. Wrote details about each scene on a notecard: the list of characters, settings, and what happens. On each card/scene, I know how many words there are and how many pages it is. I shuffle these cards, staring at the mesa in front of my casita. I run my eyes from one end to the other and at the same time run my fingers along the cards. Where the mesa ends, I stop. That is the card for the day. The scene to revise. I read the back, which holds my opinions about the scene. How I want to consolidate or grow or change it. I rewrite the scene by hand in my Muji notebook and my Muji mechanical pencil with 0.5 lead. I do this until lunchtime.
At lunch, I talk again. We digest what we are working on, give each other advice, discuss books and films. And hikes. And how we want America to be better.
In the afternoons, I revise the novel again or read the memoir. My favorite spot to read the memoir is in front of my casita on my porch on a blue Adirondack chair. The memoir is older, more mature, printed in Times New Roman on white paper in 12-point font, double-spaced. So academic. I should have printed it on Arial, or Calibri, or some other whack font. I read each page. Mark up capitalizations, sentence endings, change entire clauses. I know exactly what is wrong with my memoir. I did not know this earlier because I was too close to it. I took a break from the memoir for a year, and now here I am. The beginning is worse than the rest of the book and it is because I desperately want the audience to like me. I use strange phrases. Things that don’t quite make sense. Lindsey-isms, which are sometimes fun and necessary, but can easily distract the reader. When I was a child, I used to be bad in restaurants, talking, screaming, singing, leaning over booths, crawling under them. My grandma had to take me out to the car until I calmed down. I used to be bad in restaurants because I wanted to entertain the patrons. As a toddler, restaurants were boring, and I believed I could make everyone feel better. I could be a star for them, which resulted in yelling and singing and acting like a goof. I still do this to try to win people over and George calls it “Toddlering Out.” There is a lot of Toddlering Out in the beginning pages of the memoir. A façade I should drop. Sentences where I am just trying too hard, usually through too many adjectives and adverbs. Underdeveloped truths and gushy wounds. I need to withhold, just a little. If all goes well, the rest of the memoir will have less of the toddler and more me as I am now.
5:30 is dinner. I talk some more. Life is much easier when I don’t have to be anyone else. I can be this writer person. I can talk through my process without feeling nervous or judged. I am not worried about taking up space. I am confident enough to share.
Then there is after dinner where I walk with the group on the arroyos and find a Mojave rattlesnake, a baby one, the deadliest snake in America. I stand in front of the sage brush, pinch its leaves and sniff my fingers. I visit the horses with Carter who paints skulls. I walk the labyrinth and ask it, what is my authentic way? I read tarot cards for each of us. We talk of the past and how we learned from it. 7 of swords—how to be honest with ourselves. If I am lucky, I get to become these women. 10 of pentacles—everything has led to this. Temperance—I don’t want to leave. The full moon rises. Each day, we earn the moon.
I read until I fall asleep. In the morning, I open my eyes to the cholla outside my window.
Excited for you and your time at ghost ranch!