On the road again: Balticon, day 6

The trip from Washington, VA to Raleigh is not a long one, maybe five or so hours by car. With a hurt back, however, it can seem like a very long time indeed. To make the ride more tolerable for me, we stopped multiple times, which of course increased the drive's overall duration.

We made one of the stops in Ashland, VA, where we ate our amazing Inn at Little Washington picnic at a wooden table outside the official Ashland Visitor Center. This small old building sits beside some active railroad tracks and is across the street and down a bit from Randolph Macon College. To get to the place, you have to know it’s there and go around the block a bit, because the only road adjacent to it is one way the wrong way from the main feed off I-95. Once we found it, however, we were able both to enjoy our meal and to brush up on local Civil War history. I recommend the stop, if only for the odd, quaint quality of the place.

The older I get and the longer I write, the clearer it is to me that every time you think about the stuff related to writing--reviews, fans, awards, literary value, movie rights, you name it--you make doing the work that much harder. I suspect you also hurt the work, though I tend to be focused enough that once I’m actually writing that noise vanishes and I become totally immersed in the story. Plus, later passes afford you the opportunity to fix the shortcomings of your first draft. Still, I wish I could completely ignore everything but the work itself. I can’t, and I suspect no writer can, but I intend to try harder to do so.

On a science-fictional note, Pam sent me a link to an interesting story on a novel therapy intended to let people regrow body parts. I’m quite optimistic that we as a race will solve this and many other medical challenges. I expect some disasters along the way--we always make mistakes, and some mistakes have dire consequences--but I do believe we’ll succeed. Unfortunately, I think our success will come too late for me to benefit, which sucks, but I’m going to invest a lot of effort over the next couple of years in becoming healthier so I can improve my odds of being around long enough to reap the rewards of the coming improvements in medical science.